


The Price of Power

by Felle_DesignWorks (Felle)



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Medieval, Eventual Glitradora, F/F, No She-Ra...Or Is There?, Trans Catra (She-Ra)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-25
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:01:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 49,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24363979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Felle/pseuds/Felle_DesignWorks
Summary: The sovereign princess of Grayskull has acceded to her throne after a long regency and must now entertain offers for her hand—no matter what her bodyguard's feelings are on the matter.
Relationships: Adora/Catra (She-Ra), Adora/Glimmer (She-Ra), Catra/Glimmer (She-Ra)
Comments: 72
Kudos: 344





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [moonwatcher13](https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonwatcher13/gifts).



> As with _Blood Drunk_ , there will be a number of ships featured here, so this space will detail which chapters focus on which ships. As I get new chapter outlines and write them, I'll update this ledger as well as the tags.
> 
> Chapter One: Catradora  
> Chapter Two: No smut  
> Chapter Three: No smut  
> Chapter Four: Catradora  
> Chapter Five: No smut, but some Glitra spiciness  
> Chapter Six: Glimmadora  
> Chapter Seven: No smut  
> Chapter Eight: No smut  
> Chapter Nine: Glitra
> 
> By request, what I consider to be the smutty sections are marked with a horizontal bar at their outset and ending.

Catra had to fight to keep her seething silent and private, to not let a hiss escape her throat or let her eye twitch. She could only grip harder at the hilt of her sword. Any harder, though, and she wondered if she might snap it in half.

Helplessness, powerlessness—Catra didn’t wear them well. How could she be expected to? Her orders, her work, her entire life, were all predicated on knowing when to act and being able to do so. To act decisively, without a second thought. Being told to stand there quietly and watch her world slip away was almost too much to bear.

She knew that witch could feel the discomfort radiating off her. Delighted in it, even. Shadow Weaver stood on the opposite side of the room, expressionless with her mask, watching things unfold. As a chaperone, she’d said. That was the final insult, taking Catra’s role as guardian. Telling her since she was a child that her life’s only meaning, only value, was to protect and serve the princess…and then snatching it away as if she couldn’t be trusted.

The princess in question sat at the table in the middle of the room, teacup at hand but untouched, smiling at something her latest caller had said. Not a polite smile, either, but a real one that crinkled the corners of her eyes. Catra was torn between quiet contentment at seeing her happy and resentment that it was someone else making her so. Someone in this context.

That someone being a suitor.

Princess Adora had been absorbed in these meetings for the better part of the week, entertaining betrothal offers now that she had acceded her throne and her regent had stepped aside. Not before whispering in her ear about the paramount importance of securing the succession, of course. With no living siblings, an heir to the Principality of Grayskull was the only thing to secure the confidence of the people, Shadow Weaver had said. Damn that witch.

And now she was smiling at this one, this heiress to the Bright Moon magocracy. Princess Glimmer. Adora had kept her previous meetings polite but formal, not lingering on the suitor once they left the room, but Catra could tell this one was different. She could see it in the way Adora’s gaze lingered on her, how she smiled and laughed just a little longer than normal at the things Princess Glimmer said. How she leaned forward ever so slightly. The faint rise in the pitch of her voice as she reciprocated Glimmer’s veiled flirting. It all stuck in Catra’s mind like a thorn.

After what might have been an eternity for how long it felt, their meeting began to draw to a close. The castle bell tower began to sound. Seven strikes. Catra shifted her weight from one sore foot to the other. They’d been there for hours. “Goodness, I think I’ve taken quite enough of your time,” Glimmer said, the first thing out of her mouth that Catra agreed with. Both princesses stood and bowed politely to one another, after which Adora took half a step toward her guest. Catra winced. “I’m sure you have any number of suitors asking for your hand, but I do hope you’ll keep me in mind.”

“Yes…I certainly will,” Adora said. That smile again. How was Catra supposed to bear watching this?

Glimmer stepped out of the private office and into the corridor, where her attendant had been waiting, before they disappeared in a short burst of violet light. Catra let her breath blow out as she watched Shadow Weaver glide toward Adora, leaning against the edge of the table and watching the fading starbursts left in Glimmer’s wake. “I thought she seemed agreeable,” she said, to which Adora nodded. “Bright Moon would be a powerful ally, and the exchange of magical knowledge would benefit Grayskull greatly.”

“Benefit you greatly, you mean,” Catra muttered. Not quietly enough, because Shadow Weaver turned toward her. Even with the mask between them, Catra could feel the weight of her gaze bearing down, crushing in its intensity.

“You overstep, _Captain_.”

Adora looked at her too, soft-eyed and impossibly lovable. “What did you think of her, Catra?”

Shadow Weaver scoffed. “Her opinion is hardly of consequence—”

“I asked.”

Grayskull’s court witch lapsed into stately silence. Catra thumbed at the pommel of her sword, unsure of how to respond. Truthfully, Glimmer had been nothing but polite—forward about what she was here for, but far from insistent or overbearing as some of the suitors had been. Catra still despised her. “She was…very sparkly.”

“That’s all you have to say?” Adora asked.

“You wouldn’t want for conversation, I suppose? She was here for a long time. Isn’t it late?”

Adora consented to returning to the royal apartments for the evening, which meant they were finally able to take their leave of Shadow Weaver. Despite officially stepping down as regent, she had a bad habit of still acting as if she hadn’t. Catra trailed behind Adora, studying one of her favorite places: the juncture of the princess’s neck and shoulder. The claw on her thumb extended and scratched her sword’s pommel.

As soon as the door was shut behind them and Catra had made her usual sweep to ensure they were alone, she let her shoulders slump. The princess’s apartments were their safe haven within the castle, the idyll they could both return to after the demands of the day had chipped and chipped at them. She tugged the bell by the door to let the kitchens know to have something sent up while Adora sank into her chaise longue. “I never thought I would miss my lessons,” she said as Catra came up behind her and began undoing the braids in her hair. Adora sighed a little at the press of Catra’s fingers, then tilted her head back to ease Catra’s task of working her tiara free.

“You hated those.”

“But diplomacy is so much harder,” Adora mumbled, and let Catra softly rub her temples for a few moments before standing and plucking a more comfortable outfit from her wardrobe. She disappeared behind a screen in the corner, leaving her in faint silhouette as she undressed. Catra steadied her breathing as best she could and waited, her gaze slipping to the shapes comprising Adora on the thin patterned screen. The princess was her charge, after all. She had to keep an eye on her. The shimmery white gown Adora had worn to her meetings appeared, draped over the screen. Robbed of most of its allure without its occupant, Catra thought. “I know this isn’t really negotiation, but it’s still hard.”

“You seemed to take to it well enough by the end,” Catra muttered under her breath.

Adora hadn’t heard her, it seemed, and continued on. “There are all these things to consider for each person. What are our relations like, what’s their succession system, what would they want from us in the future, what could we gain, what would we need…and I know if I forget something then I know Shadow Weaver will chastise me. Meanwhile all I can think of is whether this one or that one can’t share the conversation, if they have something in their teeth, if they’re cute—”

Catra was spared having to listen any longer by a knock at the door. She took the gown from the screen and balled it up as she walked away, trying to keep her claws from coming out. Kyle was at the door with a covered tray of whatever the cooks had made for them. She snatched the tray and shoved the gown into his hands to go to the laundry before slamming the door in his face. “What was that?” Adora asked, calling from the next room.

“Supper. Are you changed yet?”

She brought the tray to the main room and set it on the table that overlooked the garden. Catra peered over the balcony to see if there was anyone nearby, idly grasping her sword hilt, but the paths running among the hedges and topiaries were silent and still.

“I wonder what Rogelio made tonight.”

Catra turned and gripped her sword so hard that her hand ached. Adora’s nightwear was simple, bordering on plain, but it also left her shoulders bare, allowing Catra’s gaze to trace almost unbroken from her parting lips, to the slight curve of her throat that flowed down to her collarbone, all the way down her arm to the long, delicate fingers closing over the tray cover’s handle to lift it. Her tail flicked against one leg. It was almost too much. No one else ever saw Adora like this, and now Catra was being told to step aside and share this impossibly private view with someone else? Unthinkable. They would have to kill her first.

“Catra? Something the matter?”

She shook her head clear and let go of her sword, flexing her hand to work out some of the soreness before unbuckling her belt to lay her weapons on the bed. “No, nothing,” she lied, and went to join her princess.

Her stew was muted, almost tasteless. The past few days of these matchmaking meetings had left ashes in her mouth. She managed to keep their conversation going, but only just. Something about the excavation of an ancient magical site in the borderlands with Salineas and the people who wanted state funding for it. Catra found it difficult to care. She didn’t have any magic herself—or she’d never had the resources to set her work aside for the time that studying it properly required—and so the only association she had for it was their court wizard. She shuddered.

“…I’ll take your silence as assent,” Adora was saying.

“Beg pardon?”

But Adora was already darting to her wardrobe, rooting around in one of the drawers before producing a brush with a sly, mischievous look on her face. Catra worried her lower lip between her teeth. “Oh no.”

“The less you resist, the faster this will be over,” Adora said, advancing on her. Catra almost knocked her chair over in her haste to stand and back up. “Please don’t make me order you, we both know you need this. It’s been weeks!”

“Then what’s another week?” Catra asked as she ducked into the next room.

Adora couldn’t help laughing as she chased Catra through her apartments, even though Catra thought this was far from a laughing matter. Most of the rooms connected to one another, and she had made two laps of them before Adora gained any serious ground on her. She finally dove onto the bed and covered herself with the sheets, flattening her body as much as possible to try and escape notice. A vain hope, certainly, but the excitement had robbed her of her good sense.

Distinctly princess-like footsteps padded closer, and Catra heard her sword belt fall to the floor before Adora sat near the foot of the bed. One hand batted lightly at the sheets, and Catra was barely able to resist the impulse to swat it. “Come on, Catra, don’t be like that,” Adora said. “You know your hair mats up if you don’t brush it, and I _know_ you don’t brush it on your own. Let me get the knots out, at least? Otherwise it’ll get so tangled that we’ll have to cut it short again.”

Catra growled, then relaxed when Adora laid a hand on her back through the sheets and made small circles over her skin. “Please?”

She allowed herself another moment of defiance before yielding and clambering out from under the sheets. Adora smiled, and Catra was glad she had to turn away before her princess could see her melt. The brush working into the ends of her hair pulled uncomfortably at her scalp, but she kept from complaining as Adora worked the knots loose. “You’ll do my hair next?” Adora asked.

“Mmhmm.”

There was a calm, companionable silence for a stretch before Adora said, “I know the past few days been a challenge, but it’s almost over now, isn’t it? Two more days, and then we’ll have some time to ourselves.”

She left out that she’d be expected to settle on a betrothal once the week was over, but Catra remembered. It made her claws creep out until she noticed and retracted them. “Time to ourselves,” Catra repeated. “Sounds nice.”

“Now I know you’re more perceptive than you let on, so do you have any more thoughts about Princess Glimmer other than that she’s _sparkly_ —”

Catra whipped around and grabbed Adora’s wrists so suddenly that she dropped the brush. Adora didn’t resist as Catra pushed her down onto the bed and loomed over her, heart racing, breath tight. Bright blue eyes stared up at her, shocked but not afraid. “Shut. _Up_. About her,” Catra whispered, and fell upon Adora’s lips.

* * *

The princess yielded to her kiss, forceful and possessive, squirming and straining to break free from Catra’s hold on her wrists. Catra tightened her grip on her in response. Adora parted her lips and let Catra’s tongue flit forward, exploring well-worn territory as she relaxed enough to let her weight sink down on the princess. A deep purr rumbled in Catra’s chest, dissolving to a moan when Adora canted her hips upward.

When they broke for air, Catra withdrew only after pulling Adora’s lip slightly between her teeth. The princess flexed her hands again, but Catra’s grip was iron. “Did I touch a nerve?” she asked, with the temerity to sound innocent.

Catra took one hand from Adora’s wrist and placed it over her throat, tightening just enough to make sure Adora knew she was there. The princess shivered beneath her. “You know you did.”

Adora was smirking faintly as Catra undid the tie on her nightshirt and pushed it open, leaving her soft, pale skin free to be raked by wandering claws. She was careful, as always. No marks, nothing that would last. That was the rule. The tips of two claws ghosted over her skin, around the swells of her breasts, careful to rise and fall with her breathing even as it hitched. Catra trapped one nipple between her claws and tweaked until Adora whimpered out her name: “ _Caaatra_ …”

That was all she wanted to hear—the supplication, the unrestrained want. Any other name would sound wrong on her voice, and Catra fully intended to make her forget them altogether. She trailed downward with her teeth and tongue, torn between knowing she shouldn’t leave marks and desperately wanting to. All she could do was hook her fingers into Adora’s shorts and tug them down when Adora raised her hips. Catra’s eyes fluttered closed as her lips brushed at the soft hair between Adora’s legs. Her scent was almost overpowering from so close, intoxicating, making Catra’s head swim. Nothing else could compare. “I really, _really_ don’t want to hear of any other princesses right now,” Catra growled, and drifted further down.

Adora’s back arched while one leg hiked up on Catra’s shoulder. She had long since puzzled out what the princess liked, what made her clutch the bedsheets and collapse into a twitching, quivering mess. Of course, that meant she knew how to draw out her pleasure, too, and Catra was in no mood to indulge her quickly tonight. Not that the temptation wasn’t there. The scent of Adora’s arousal paled against its taste, and Catra could gladly work to get as much as possible in short order if she didn’t control herself. She dragged her tongue over Adora’s sex, tracing a narrowing spiral that came oh so close to her clit before changing tack, wrapping her lips around the sensitive bud and sucking lightly. Broken little sounds cracked out of Adora’s chest while one hand worked into Catra’s hair, trying to somehow draw her closer.

Rather than give her what she wanted, Catra relaxed her mouth and took away the pressure, prompting a whine. Exhaustion was the only upper limit on how many times she could work Adora into incoherence like this, and she did so twice more before changing her approach. Catra slid one hand, claws firmly retracted, up the inside of Adora’s thigh until one finger glided over her entrance, slick with arousal, and only then did Catra open her eyes to look at her princess. Adora was biting down on her free hand to keep from crying out, and nodded furiously in assent when she saw Catra’s mismatched eyes gazing back up at her. Catra slowed her tongue around Adora’s clit as she applied the merest pressure with her finger, teasing, taunting. It wasn’t until the hand in her hair tightened that she relented, slipping inside without resistance. Adora moaned and let her head loll to one side as Catra curled her finger upward into the soft warmth, rubbing rhythmically in time with the motions of her tongue. When she eased a second finger in, Adora tightened around her, and Catra grinned. She was close, so very close, and only needed a little push.

“Do you want more?” Catra asked without lifting her lips from Adora, frenetic in her rush to do away with her trousers with one hand. She was as worked up as her charge, and she had to be careful to only give herself a few quick strokes to tide herself over. Adora nodded, but that wasn’t good enough. Catra wanted to hear it, wanted Adora to hear it, wanted her to remind herself that she already had everything—everyone—she needed right here. One more swipe of her tongue made Adora gasp. “Tell me, then. Tell me what you—”

_Want_ was on the tip of her tongue, but Catra shook her head and let her fangs show in her smile. She curled her fingers a little more firmly. “Tell me what you _need_.”

“You,” Adora said breathlessly, and a tingle of pleasure arced through Catra’s chest at the admission. She withdrew her fingers and crawled atop Adora again, kissing and licking at the hollow of her throat while pushing playfully at her sex. “All of you, please, Catra…don’t make me beg…”

“I like the sound of your begging,” Catra whispered, and slowly, lovingly, pressed into her.

Adora’s nails raked across her back as Catra found a good pace, eager to drag her princess back to the edge without exciting herself too much. She withdrew slightly, pausing just long enough to slip one hand between them and circle her thumb around Adora’s clit, then snapped her hips forward.

A breathy moan rolled over her cheek in response. Adora’s fingers dug tighter into Catra’s back, spurring her to speed up before easing her thrusts and working her thumb faster instead. When she felt Adora stop moving and tense up without warning before shivering all over and trying to suppress a gasp, Catra fell on the crook of her shoulder. She bit down on the sensitive skin, drawing it into her mouth until she heard a _pop_ , but the distraction wasn’t enough to stop her own climax from building. Catra rolled her hips back, ignoring Adora’s vaguely protesting sound and her own reflexes, and finished herself off with her hand. Adora twitched at the warmth now streaked across her thighs and stomach.

Catra slumped onto her side, allowing herself a moment to recover and watch Adora come down with her. Her breathing was still uneven, and her skin glistened with a faint sheen of sweat, making some hair stick at her temple. Catra tracked down to the base of her neck, where her love bite had produced a small splotching bruise. She frowned. No marks, that was the rule. An unbearable rule. Catra shuffled off the bed to wet a cloth in the washbasin, then returned to Adora’s side to clean her up. Without the throes of her orgasm to focus on, Adora let her hand drift up to the bruise. “You shouldn’t have done that,” she said. Catra focused on wiping down the insides of her thighs. Adora squirmed from the feeling, but wasn’t deterred. “Catra, people are going to see this.”

“Good. Maybe then they’ll leave us alone.”

* * *

“It’s not that simple…”

Her claws were beginning to poke out of their sheaths. She cleaned the last bit of her arousal from Adora’s hipbone and tossed the cloth into the washbasin. “No, of course not. Because you’ve got the complicated job,” she said, anger lacing her voice, and turned away. “I’m the one with the simple job. I _simply_ have to stand there and watch you pick out your consort.”

Catra looked down at her hands. Too rough, too callused, to walk through life clasped with a princess’s. The hands of a sorry little foundling who owed her life to the charity of her betters, withdrawn as easily as it was given, who shouldn’t have loved above her station. Hands too small to hold the enormity of her foolishness.

Adora pressed to her back and wrapped her arms around Catra’s waist. Catra tried to blink away the tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. “I know it’s hard for you,” Adora said softly. She nosed some of Catra’s hair aside and kissed her throat. “I’m sorry.”

“I have to stand there and watch them… _want_ you. I can smell it on them.”

“Shh, shh.” Adora rocked them both back and forth, and Catra found herself slowly being soothed despite her upset. “This isn’t ideal for you, I’m well aware. But you have to trust me, all right? I have a plan, and it doesn’t involve leaving you behind. We’ll be together, I promise. So please trust me?”

She slowly pulled Catra down onto the bed with her, nuzzling into her back and squeezing tight. The irony of feeling safest in her charge’s arms when she was the guardian was not lost on her. “I _do_ trust you. It’s everyone else I’m suspicious of.”

“That’s what makes you good at your job. Now take off your doublet, get ready for bed. We can finish your hair in the morning.”

Even that prospect didn’t seem so horrible if it involved Adora.

⁂

The rest of the week was torturous.

Adora’s betrothal options had narrowed, by polite rejection or simple attrition, to the figurehead princess of the occupied Fright Zone, the princess regnant of Salineas, and the heiress to Bright Moon. In the remaining days before the expected decision at week’s end, each of them had a good deal more time to spend with Adora—always wearing something high-collared to hide the crook of her shoulder—to make their cases. They were all exceedingly unworthy of Adora in Catra’s opinion, but no one had asked her.

She was no longer involved in the process at all, in fact. Shadow Weaver had reassigned her to a number of other tasks, all personally overseen by her, while Lonnie guarded the princess in Catra’s stead. Auditing the castle’s security was important, but there was no reason it had to be her doing so, especially when she couldn’t focus. She’d almost overlooked a broken section of wall in the garden because she had been watching Adora go into the hedge maze with Princess Glimmer. Why hadn’t Adora overruled this nonsense? Catra was a guard, not an expert in castle defenses. When she’d asked, Adora had only rubbed her ears and said, “Please trust me.”

And she did, with all her heart. But that didn’t make her immune to a tight, roiling knot of worry that kept her up at night in their bed. Even with Adora cuddled up to her side, having pointedly declined to mention anything about her extended time with her suitors and only reassuring her that there was nothing to worry about, Catra worried—feared—that this was the last night they had together.

⁂

Ordinarily, Catra loved the weekends, when Adora had time away from the demands of her role as sovereign and they had uninterrupted time to spend together. Now, though…she went through her morning routine in a haze. She warmed the bathwater, washed and arranged Adora’s hair, and helped her put on more formal jewelry than usual, a set pulled together by a single pale opal resting in the hollow of her throat.

All for her to marry someone else.

Catra laid Adora’s tiara in place, then went to buckle on her sword belt and her dress uniform’s white and gold cape that she draped from one shoulder. Adora ran a hand up the back of her dress uniform until Catra straightened up, relishing in the contact, before Adora turned her around and pressed a soft kiss to her cheek. “Everything’s going to be all right.”

“As you say, Your Majesty.”

She trailed after Adora all the way to the main hall, dreading each step, grinding her hand against her sword hilt the whole way. How she wanted to run, to take Adora’s hand and disappear with her to some quiet part of the world without royal marriages. It would be so simple, too—she now knew of several more secret passages around and out of the castle, gleaned from her audit. She went as far as reaching out to Adora when they stopped at the doors to the main hall while the sentries opened them, but let her hand fall away. Adora wouldn’t go with her, no matter how she asked. Too committed to the people of her country. Too ready to sacrifice her own happiness.

The banners of the principality depicting the Protector’s Sword—the one upon which her own sword was modeled—now shared the rafters with those of the Bright Moon magocracy. Catra’s stomach tied itself in a knot, hard as iron. The magical core of the country, the massive opalescent Moonstone, rendered with real crushed gems to make it glitter, hovered above its spindle-thin plinth against a field of pale blue.

And beneath one of them, at the high table, standing from a seat beside Adora’s own, was their princess.

Catra went numb as she followed Adora to the table, ready to be sick but for her empty stomach. The hall itself was silent as she took her place behind the high table near Princess Glimmer’s escort, a boy archer. Adora spared her a glance before she took her seat, vaguely apologetic, and Catra wondered if her heart had stopped. She’d known. She’d known at least since the night before and said nothing, letting Catra go on believing that she had some kind of plan. _Everyone_ had known before her.

Adora was saying something to the assembled court and visitors from Bright Moon, but Catra’s ears were ringing too badly to hear any of it clearly. She couldn’t be here. Couldn’t bear witness to any more of this. Catra stood stock-still until Adora had taken her seat and the servants came out of the kitchens with the first course, then took advantage of the bustle to slip to the door. “Take my place,” she said thickly to Lonnie, standing sentry at the edge of the hall, then went down the corridor as fast as she could without running.

She made it as far as the training hall before she broke down, slumping against the cold stone wall and holding her hand over her mouth to stifle her crying. The tears smudged into her fur and darkened it. She didn’t care. There was no one here to see her here, and how could she care about something so inconsequential to begin with? The only point of constancy, safety, _joy_ in her life had just committed herself to someone else. Her world was crumbling underneath her, shifting away like sand, threatening to pull her under.

Eventually her throat grew too sore to keep sobbing. Her vision was still hazy with tears as she struggled to her feet and trudged to the other side of the hall, where the practice weapons hung on their racks. Catra took her preferred wooden arming sword, weighted to match the real one that she set aside, and stalked toward the training dummies, dragging a claw down one of the sword’s fullers until there was a dark line in the wood from hilt to tip.

She started the routine slowly, battering the dummy with precise strikes, before her training took over and she sped up. Imagining a certain princess’s face on the dummy made it easier to throw more strength than usual behind her blows. Catra knew all the forms by heart—step, slash, feint, slash—and soon she was whipping around her target with such speed that she had to use her tail for counterbalance. The dummy creaked and groaned under her sustained assault, listing to one side until she launched a straight kick at its center mass and detached the body from its stand. Catra was on it as soon as it hit the floor, her sword forgotten, extending her claws and slashing at the surface.

By the time an ache in her arms forced her to slow, the targets painted onto the dummy’s face and chest were all but unrecognizable, paint torn away to expose the raw, unvarnished wood underneath. Catra sat up, still straddling the dummy as she tried to catch her breath. She had started crying again at some point, and blinked the tears away before reaching for her sword. Her dress uniform was surely a mess by now and someone from the laundry would reproach her over it, but Catra didn’t care. Her anger needed some other vent before she did something impolitic, and sitting there exhausted and staring at the wall wasn’t going to do it.

Perhaps she ought to just leave, Catra thought. Adora wouldn’t let anyone pursue her if she vanished into the capital or beyond to sell her sword. She might even be glad of it. A clean break so she could start her marriage without…complications. Because that was all she was, Catra knew. A complication. She was about to bite down on the soft part of her hand to stifle her scream when footsteps pricked at her ears.

“What’s wrong?”

Her fur stood on end. That voice…Catra tightened her grip on her training sword as she stood and turned. Her expression was so full of venomous hatred that Princess Glimmer took a step back, even from the other side of the room. Catra straightened herself up to her full height and puffed out her chest. _You. You’re what’s wrong._

“Nothing at all, Your Highness,” she lied, idly spinning her sword at her side as she went to the weapons rack. Glimmer took a few steps toward her. Catra put her training sword back in its place, but kept one hand on it. “This part of the palace isn’t for visitors. Shouldn’t you be in the main hall? With your _betrothed_?”

She put too much ire into the word, enough that it made Glimmer bite back as she approached her. “I believe that’s where you should be, too,” the princess said drily. “It’s where you were before storming out in a huff, isn’t it?”

“If you need directions, tell me. Otherwise I have nothing to say to you, Your Highness. I’m just a guard.”

Glimmer was close enough now that Catra could make out the details of her face and clothes. She wore mage’s robes woven from some kind of violet shimmersilk enchanted to make for a perfect fit, along with a full cape fashioned to resemble a starry night sky, with pinpricks of light shining on the inside to match the glistering points in her hair. Catra frowned. If she was anyone else, Catra might have called her cute as she folded her arms. “Yes, you are. And you clearly have some kind of problem with me despite that. Tell me what it is so we can resolve it, because staying here with my future wife’s attendant angry with me isn’t going to happen.”

_You don’t have to stay here_ ¸ Catra wanted to say. She picked something equally cold instead. “I don’t take orders from you.”

“You will.”

Catra’s eyes narrowed. Was she _trying_ to get a slash across the face? She took two fresh practice swords from the rack and tossed one to Glimmer. “This is the training hall. Train or get out.”

“Are you really…fine.” Glimmer went to another rack and exchanged the sword for a training lance before removing the blunted oak head to make a quarterstaff for herself. She trailed one end across the floor as she followed Catra to the center of the room. The soreness that had settled over Catra’s arms melted away as she tried to remember the forms for dealing with staves: move in quickly, make their advantage in reach a liability. “I did try to talk this out first.”

“Duly noted.”

Catra pressed the attack immediately, taking an aggressive stance to move into a rising slash. She knew she couldn’t _kill_ the princess, but she could at least show her up and establish that she wasn’t going to roll over and take this quietly. Catra turned away a swipe aimed at her off arm and slammed her shoulder into Glimmer’s collarbone, exposing her side to a quick smack. The princess scurried back, struggling for breath as she leveled her staff. Catra smirked. She was willing to wager there was a mage’s physique under those robes, not a fighter’s. If this came down to attrition, there was no contest. Catra brought her sword low to slash upward again and knock the staff from her hands, but the blade met only empty air when it should have connected.

She blinked, trying to process what had happened. Glimmer was there in one instant, and then…not in the next. A faint violet afterimage dotted with starbursts and a high _pop_ were all that remained. Catra wheeled around to try and figure out where she’d disappeared to, only to get a magic-wreathed fist to the face that made her stagger back. She growled and shook away the stars in her vision to see Glimmer taking up an offensive stance. “You’re a _battlemage_ ,” Catra hissed, her cheek aching with each sound.

Glimmer wound up for a wide swing, then vanished before reappearing in front of Catra with the staff aimed at her stomach. She barely got her sword up to block before Glimmer vanished again, popping back into existence at a different angle that let her strike Catra’s wrist from below, sending the sword flying. One more disappearing act leveled her out in front of Catra, who yanked her hand toward her chest to soothe the sudden pain there.

“And you’re out of your depth.”

Catra scrambled to get her sword back, but Glimmer was on her as soon as her fingers brushed at the hilt, appearing in front of her. But Catra was ready this time. When the staff swung at her, Catra caught it in her hands, keeping Glimmer from striking her with it until she was able to unsheathe her claws and slide them together so they struck at Glimmer’s fingers. She yelped in pain and lost her grip, giving Catra enough time to yank it away and toss it across the room before snatching up her sword. Glimmer was looking down at the blood on her fingers when Catra pressed the sword tip to the soft spot beneath Glimmer’s chin. As long as they were making contact like this, Catra reasoned, she couldn’t vanish without taking both of them.

Glimmer fell still, gritting her teeth in pain as she took a step back to match Catra’s advance. “Kneel,” Catra spat.

To her surprise, Glimmer did. She had a look that could kill, but she knelt all the same. Catra had to stifle a laugh. Maybe she could salvage this after all. Maybe this princess could be made to see the order of things. Catra nudged the sword forward ever so slightly, and Glimmer winced. She’d been beaten in under a minute. “You will never take Adora away from me, do you understand? _Never_.”

She drew the sword back to poke at Glimmer again, but the moment where they lost contact was enough. The princess was gone before Catra could correct her mistake, leaving only her ghostly afterimage in her place. Catra grimaced, torn between frustration and relief that she hadn’t been able to do any worse, and tossed her sword aside with a snarl.


	2. Chapter 2

Glimmer landed on the floor in the quarters she had been given for her stay in Grayskull seconds before she began to crash. No longer in the midst of a battle high, she slumped over, drawing what comfort she could from the cold stone pressing to her cheek. Better than the burning pain settling in her hands. “Bow,” she called, rolling onto her back. For an instant she could see the training hall again, where Princess Adora’s guard was throwing aside her training sword. “Bow!”

“Where did you go off to—what happened?”

He was at her side in seconds, scooping her up to his chest and carrying her to a sofa in the corner. Glimmer’s head lolled to one side as he inspected her hands. The vestige caused by her teleportation was still there in the middle of the room, deceptively solid, a trick that her magic played on her overtaxed mind. She blinked, and it was gone. “I overdid it.”

“Were you fighting? Why would you…all right, I have some salve. Try not to move too much.”

Most of her was only too happy to comply. Her hands, however, began to burn even hotter, on top of the simple pain from the cuts across her fingers. Throwing magic into her attacks had given her an edge, but now she was paying for it. Glimmer tried to resist shoving her hands under her back and kept them as flat as she could over her stomach.

Bow first applied the salve, his own concoction, to her hands and wrists to soothe the spellburn there. It didn’t stop the pain, but blunted it enough that she could think straight. He then dabbed a cloth soaked in strong wine against the cuts on her fingers, apologizing as she grimaced in pain, then did the same with a water-soaked cloth to clean away the blood. “Did your aunt see you like this?” he asked as he began applying bandages to each cut. Glimmer shook her head. Her body felt light suddenly, and the room around her drifted as if part of a dream. More effects of overusing her magic. “I’ll fetch her, you ought to have a mage look at your hands.”

“No! No, don’t get her. She’s got enough on her mind, I don’t want her making a fuss over what happened.”

“What _did_ happen? And why don’t you want Castaspella to know about it…?”

“Can I have some tea, please? My head’s all fuzzy.”

Bow went to heat the water, though not before paying her an unconvinced look. She needed a few minutes to collect her thoughts. The less likely it was that anyone was going to smash the delicate arrangement they’d only just arrived at with Grayskull, the better. Glimmer turned on her side and immediately regretted it. The blow that girl had given her on her ribs flared, forcing her onto her back once more. “And some ice for my side!”

When she had found a relatively painless position, she took a deep, steadying breath and went over the last hour in her head: thanking the well-wishers congratulating her and Adora, noticing the look of sorrow on her betrothed’s face when she noticed the guard behind her had changed, sending Bow back to their rooms and finding Catra in the training grounds, their bout…she was strong, Glimmer would give her that much. Possibly unhinged as well, but definitely strong. Maybe even a little fetching if not for the discomfiting possessiveness she displayed toward her charge.

Bow helped her sit up and take a sip of the tea, given the sorry state of her hands. The powdered root from one of Bright Moon’s forests in it diminished the floaty, dreamlike quality of the world around her by small degrees until she felt cogent enough to not worry about passing out. Glimmer pointed out the sore spot on her ribs, and Bow produced a packet from his satchel that cooled to freezing after he snapped it over his knee. Once he fastened it to her side with another length of gauze, Glimmer sighed in relief. “Now please, tell me what happened,” Bow said.

“You’re not going to like it.”

“I’m your guard, and you’re injured. I already don’t like it. You might as well tell me now so I don’t have to upset our hosts by making a formal inquiry.”

“Ugh, you’re worse than my father, do you know that?” Glimmer asked. Her gruffness didn’t make him back off, though, and he simply sat beside her, holding her tea with an expectant look on his face. “Fine…”

She explained what had happened after they parted ways in the main hall, taking pains to detail just how close the fight was. Somehow it didn’t seem to impress him. If anything, he only seemed horrified that she had fought with their host’s guard. “Don’t look at me like that,” Glimmer said, shifting the cold pack to another part of her side. “She was the one in the wrong! I was only looking for her because Adora seemed upset that she left, and she couldn’t very well walk out of her own hall while she and Aunt Castaspella were finalizing terms. I was trying to do something nice for my future wife since her guard is so important to her, and I’m the one who gets clawed up and held at swordpoint! You should be on my side, I’m the aggrieved party here.”

Bow offered her another sip of tea. Without the need to steady her mind, it was actually rather bitter. “I _am_ on your side, Glimmer. But you have to think about this situation as a whole. Bright Moon hasn’t had the best relations with Grayskull since your father’s old teacher became the court mage here. We need this alliance, your mother made that very clear when we left. You’ve had to make a lot of concessions here to the other suitors to make them back off, and I don’t think that jumping into a fight with your new betrothed’s personal guard was the most politic option.”

“I did try to talk to her first. I was only asking for a little understanding… _I’ve_ certainly been understanding…”

She didn’t elaborate, despite Bow’s arched eyebrow. No need to open that door. “Well, maybe we should try to talk this out now. I’m sure if we explain your side of things, we’ll still be able to salvage this. I’ll go get Castaspella and—”

“My aunt is here as a representative of Mystacor’s interests, not Bright Moon’s. This doesn’t have to involve her.” Her authoritative voice, however, didn’t work on her friend. “I need you to trust that I know what I’m doing. This can be fixed, as long as we do it quietly.”

Bow didn’t look convinced so much as worried, but he always looked at least a little worried. “All right. We’ll do it your way.”

He fixed her up as best he could and followed her out of the guest wing. Adora wasn’t in the main hall when they checked, nor was she in her private office. That left her quarters, which Glimmer had only approached once. Glimmer wanted to simply teleport them to the royal apartments rather than wander the halls—Castle Grayskull had an ancient, deliberately obscure layout, not helped by new sections having been added haphazardly over the years—but it was still too risky after overtaxing herself. Hopefully she could find her way around and still have a chance to explain things before Catra colored her own recount to Adora.

Her betrothal was off to a fine start, she thought.

The door to Adora’s solar was ajar when they arrived, which struck Glimmer as odd. She could hear voices from within, too faint to make out what they were saying. “Hello?” she asked quietly, nudging the door open. They were going to share these quarters soon enough, she reasoned, so it was fine if she went inside. “Adora?”

Despite the finer trappings, the princess’s apartments shared the rest of the castle’s austere, slightly dreary feeling. They took a few steps inside, and Glimmer heard the voices from before in greater focus before she could call out again: “…just a false alarm, that’s all. I had to go see what the problem was.” Catra’s voice, from the next room. She sounded much gentler than before. “Then some of the new recruits asked me to show them a few things when I was coming back. One of them got a lucky hit on me, I guess—”

“Liar!”

Glimmer rushed through the nearest doorway before she could think better of it. That led her to Adora’s bedchamber, where the princess and her guard were sitting on her bed. Catra was holding up one side of her uniform to let Adora work a tincture into her side, at a spot where Glimmer had managed to hit her. Both of them looked at the interlopers for a moment, nonplussed. “Hello, Your Majesty,” Bow said nervously.

As if his voice had snapped them out of their shock, Catra scrambled off the bed and lunged for her sword, still on her belt on the table nearby. Bow, in turn, took an arrow from his quiver and nocked it. She had her sword halfway out of its sheath before Adora snapped, “Catra!”

She looked at her charge, then back to their unexpected guests, and relaxed. Glimmer furrowed her brow. According to Adora, Catra had no magic of her own, but there was some kind of enchantment on that sword that blazed to life as she exposed the polished blade. She slipped it back into its sheath, and the energy buffeting Glimmer vanished. Whatever kind of magic it was, she’d never felt anything of the sort before. How strange, to think there were magics unknown to them in Bright Moon.

“Glimmer? Why are…your hands,” Adora said, jumping to her feet and slipping past Catra to hurry over to her. She clasped Glimmer’s hands in her own to look them over, mindful not to touch the bandages on her fingers. “How did this happen?”

“I wouldn’t exactly call it a training accident…” Glimmer looked sidelong at Catra, glowering back at her, tail flicking angrily. “I went to find your attendant, since you seemed to miss her presence in the main hall this morning. And rather than tell me why she left in such a rush to go destroy a training dummy, she decided dueling was a better option. These are claw scratches.”

Adora pushed one of the bandages back to inspect the wound, then pinched the bridge of her nose. Glimmer winced from a sudden spike in magical energy, though it seemed to have no source. Adora had no magic, as far as Glimmer knew, but _something_ flared as the princess turned to face her guard. “Is this true?” she asked.

Catra groaned and pursed her lips, idly touching the hilt of her sword as her weight shifted from heel to heel. “You’re just going to believe her anyway…”

“Catra!” Adora rounded on her guard, quickly enough that Catra backed into the bed. A flicker of guilt gave Glimmer pause, but she knew she couldn’t tolerate this kind of affront, not if she wanted to live here peaceably. No matter what concessions she had to make. “Of all the things to do…you quit your post and then attack my guest? My betrothed? I told you I had everything in hand, you only had to trust me!”

“I _did_ trust you, and now look where we are! You just rolled over and did what Shadow Weaver told you to do. You might be able to pick and choose whatever you want the second something better comes along and abandon me, but I don’t have that luxury,” Catra spat at her.

Bow put a hand on Glimmer’s shoulder. “Should we be hearing this?”

“I doubt it…”

Adora took half a step away from Catra as if she’d been struck, then recovered and even closed the distance between them slightly. Glimmer felt another surge of unfamiliar magic radiating from the princess as tears welled up in her eyes, stronger than the first, like a disorienting shock through her body. “How could you think I would abandon you?” Adora demanded as her voice raised almost to shouting. “What would make you think that? Why couldn’t you just trust me instead of doing something like this? Now everything I had planned is ruined!”

“We can still work this out,” Glimmer said, but they had long since stopped noticing her. Adora took another step toward Catra, who shoved her back, and stumbled into a small table. The hand she put on the edge to steady herself snapped away a chunk of the wood, and no sooner had they all looked at it in bewilderment than Adora clutched the sides of her head and fell to her knees with a pained gasp. “A-Adora?”

Glimmer approached her at the same moment Catra did, setting their acrimony aside for the moment, but there wasn’t much to do. The princess trembled, head still in her hands, unresponsive when they jostled her or called her name. Glimmer thought she saw a teleportation vestige around her, but that couldn’t be. Adora didn’t have slip magic, first of all, and the flashing image around her wasn’t…her, exactly. It looked somewhat like her, but a fair bit taller, with thicker arms and much longer, brighter hair. Rather than lingering, the afterimage disappeared altogether, then reappeared, lasting a few instants longer than before.

“What is that?” Catra asked, edging away from Adora to grasp her sword. “That’s magic, like what you did before—what did you do to her?”

“I didn’t do anything!”

Dozens of voices, maybe hundreds, filled the air like steel scratching on stone. Clapping her hands over her ears didn’t block it out, and even Bow and Catra seemed to react to it, even without any magical sensitivity. Glimmer stood and backed up to try and get away from it, watching the illusory Adora blink in and out of existence faster and faster. There was another surge in the room’s magic, enough to make Glimmer’s spellburns ache, and then so much light that she had to force her eyes shut.

Bow pulled her back and shielded her before the light dissipated and the screeching chorus faded, and Glimmer had to nudge him aside when she could see again to figure out what had happened. Her whole body tingling from completely foreign magic was somehow the least strange thing.

The illusion had become the reality. Adora straightened up, so tall now that she could reach and touch the ceiling without trouble, and dragged her hands down her face. Her hair, formerly the color of beaten gold and long enough only to reach her shoulders, now shone almost platinum and hung to her waist. A spiderweb of red lines stretching over her skin gradually swelled to prominence, bleeding off so much magic that Glimmer was almost overwhelmed by it. “Adora?” Catra asked, her voice shaking with trepidation. “Is that you?”

At the sound of her name, Adora’s face screwed up in pain, and an idle swing of her arm demolished the table she had damaged earlier. Bow grabbed Glimmer’s shoulder again and moved her back—the motion of which must have startled Adora, because she stepped away from them, backing into a wall that cracked and groaned under the impact. Catra rushed toward her, and Adora stilled long enough for Catra to wrap her arms around her. “Talk to me, what’s happening—”

Adora yanked her off her feet with no more effort than if she was picking up a crumb, recognition flashing over her face for an instant before flinging Catra away. Glimmer managed to fashion a cushion out of the air before she struck the wall, but Catra still cried out in pain from the crash. Bow reached into his satchel and threw a vial of spellshred powder at Adora’s feet to dispel whatever magic had her in its grip, but the silver cloud it released only seemed to make Adora angrier. She stomped on the vial with enough force to make the whole room shake, throwing Glimmer and Bow off-balance. Catra, only recovered enough to get onto her hands and knees, at least managed not to fall down.

“Please tell me you know what’s going on!” Bow said, rummaging in his pack for something, anything else. Glimmer wasn’t sure if he was talking to her or Catra. All she could try was her own magic and hope that she hadn’t inhaled enough of the spellshred powder to debilitate herself. Despite the ache still lingering in her hands, Glimmer tried to bind Adora, wrapping violet tendrils over her body. The chains tightened, pressing in on her muscles and the sickly red lines overlaying them, and for a moment Glimmer hoped that it was over.

Only for a moment.

Adora simply started to move again, scattering the magic into twinkling starbursts. Her growl was guttural, almost less than human, accompanied by a wild kick that send her bed across the room, frame and all. The wood cracked and splintered from the impact with the wall and floor, and a few shards narrowly missed Glimmer before bouncing off the wall behind her. Bow wrapped one arm around her stomach and yanked her away, just as Adora began attacking everything else in reach. Glimmer saw Catra begin to stand before Bow brought her to another room and moved between her and the mess. “We tried it your way, now it’s my turn,” he said, looking over his shoulder as the room shuddered around them again. “We need Castaspella.”

She had no rebuttal. Glimmer only nodded, clasped Bow’s hand, and pictured the castle’s main hall, the last place she had seen her aunt. Coldness washed over her, snapping against her skin as they displaced the air around them, and then they were safely away from the wreckage. The courtiers still assembled there were huddled together in small groups, looking around nervously at the tremors faintly rocking the castle. _Luck_ seemed the wrong word, but Glimmer still felt a wave of relief when she saw Castaspella was still there, in the middle of another argument with Shadow Weaver. Good, she thought. Both of them would be useful. They had only just turned to her when Glimmer grabbed their sleeves, waited for Bow to hold onto her shoulder, and sent them all across the castle.

Her head pounded from teleporting again in such quick succession while carrying three other people, but her nerves allowed her to push past it as the princess’s apartments—or what was left of them—appeared around her. Catra was diving under a chaise longue with her sword in hand as Adora punched through one of the walls dividing two of her rooms, then clutched her head as if she hadn’t smashed through solid stone.

“What in the world,” Castaspella began, but Shadow Weaver was already fashioning a rune, jagged red lines following the movements of her fingers before resolving into a circular shape. Glimmer didn’t recognize the interior sigil, but Castaspella was able to replicate it easily enough. Whatever the spell was, it darkened the room around them despite the brightness from the runes, as if it was parasitizing the light around itself for fuel. Glimmer shuddered from the energy as rings appeared around Adora’s arms and legs. They were stronger than her attempt at restraints, straightening Adora’s limbs to either side to immobilize her. Even then, the effort to maintain the spell seemed enormous.

“Catra, your sword,” Shadow Weaver said, voice cracking from the strain of channeling so much magic. Her robes billowed from the energy, and Glimmer was no longer sure if there was anything solid under them. Catra clambered out from under the chaise longue. “Touch the hilt to her forehead, quickly!”

“You want me to give her a weapon? Have you lost your mind?”

“ _Do it_!”

The commanding tone seemed to cow Catra into obedience, and she drew the sword from its sheath. Its magic felt even stronger than before, almost overpowering as Catra edged closer and closer to Adora. Her restraints were failing, her own magic fighting against the bindings, until the one around her right ankle failed, freeing her to kick out and destroy a section of doorway. Shadow Weaver slid back on the rug with the strain of maintaining her hold. “Catra!”

She reversed her grip and leapt at Adora, latching onto her torso before putting the pommel of her sword to Adora’s forehead. The rest of the bonds shattered all at once, releasing enough energy to throw Glimmer back toward the wall. Bow managed to catch her and took the brunt of the impact, but Shadow Weaver and Castaspella were less fortunate, bouncing off the stone and crumpling on the floor.

When Glimmer’s head stopped ringing from the overload, she shook off the dust that had settled and looked around. All the furniture in the room had been pushed back or overturned, and the candles around the apartments were similarly knocked free of their stands—mercifully blown out, leaving everything lit only by the sunlight from the window overlooking the garden. “Are you hurt?” she asked as she rolled off of Bow.

“No more than the last time we were thrown into a wall by a magically enhanced princess…ow.” She didn’t like the sound of his groan, but at least he was unharmed enough to make japes. “What about you?”

“I’m fine.” Truthfully the tightness around her chest when she breathed too deeply gave Glimmer pause, but it seemed too inconsequential to worry about now. More concerning was the way the room was still coursing with magical energy from five different sources, mingling with and overpowering the anti-magic powder still floating about. It worsened Glimmer’s headache and made her spellburns tingle painfully, even more so now that she had drawn on her powers again in the middle of recovery. The physical damage was one thing, easily healed one way or another, but overtaxing her magic meant refraining from it until she was near the Moonstone again.

None of which was all that concerning when compared to the matter of her betrothed.

Glimmer struggled to her feet and took a few careful steps toward the epicenter. Adora had returned to her normal size, though her outfit was now strained at the seams where it wasn’t simply torn, unconscious for the moment as Catra cradled her. Nothing looked obviously _wrong_ , she didn’t seem to have any injuries from whatever had happened, and she was breathing normally. Catra held her tighter and mumbled something Glimmer couldn’t hear. She turned her attention instead to the sword at Catra’s side, forgotten for want of something more important to hold. It pulsed with magic, more than Glimmer had ever felt from an artifact, a kind she had never felt before. Studying it would be interesting, and at the very least a worthy addition to the Bright Moon archives, she thought as she reached down—

“Do _not_ touch that.”

She jumped and turned on her heel to see Shadow Weaver struggling to her feet while quickly reforming a piece of her mask that had broken off in the impact. When she had affected some of her usual foreboding bearing, she shaped another rune that both levitated the sword and Catra’s belt before it sheathed itself and hung there. Its magic faded, inert for the moment once again. Shadow Weaver nodded, and Glimmer took it and slung the belt over one shoulder. She was hopeless with swords, but better that they not lose track of it.

Bow was helping Castaspella stand before she rounded on Shadow Weaver, sweeping an accusatory hand toward Adora. “What just happened? You knew exactly what spell to use there, one that I’ve never seen, so don’t bother pleading ignorance.”

She sighed—or appeared to, Glimmer was no longer sure if whatever was under those robes was capable of breathing and sighing. “Old magic coming to the surface. Very old, as old as Grayskull. Pulled up by some strain, I would imagine. Though what, specifically, I can only speculate. Unless our esteemed guests can offer some insight?”

Glimmer shivered from having Shadow Weaver’s gaze on her. “There was an argument,” she said, picking her words to stay within the bounds of the truth, “and then Adora seemed to be in pain before all this magic burst out of her and she turned into…that.”

“So you know what happened?” Castaspella asked.

Shadow Weaver shrugged. “I know myths. Legends. Stories pieced together over centuries, across languages, and then pared down to something coherent by archivists with their own biases. A sword-wielding champion serving the empire of the First Ones, whose rebellion presaged their downfall. Many imperial successor states have similar tales: Dryl, Salineas…Mystacor. In the absence of anything more definite, I dismissed it as fiction, a story made up after the fact by the remnants of the empire to explain their collapse.”

“That wasn’t fiction,” Bow said softly.

“So it would seem.”

Glimmer touched a length of the belt now hanging from her shoulder. “This is the real Protector’s Sword, isn’t it? The one lost years ago?” she asked

“Half the blades in the principality are modeled on the Protector’s Sword, the chance of it being the original is slim. And it would certainly not be in Catra’s hands if I knew it to be. It is _a_ sword with powerful enchantments designed to nullify magic. Though it was meant to be wielded against attackers using magic to overpower Grayskull’s forces, not on the princess herself. We are fortunate that it worked at all.”

Glimmer nodded once and looked back to Adora. She wasn’t convinced, not by any stretch of the imagination, but sussing out a lie from an even-toned voice behind a mask was beyond her ability. Castaspella asked, “You don’t know anything else about this…legend, magic, whatever it was?”

“Much as it pains me to admit a shortcoming in my knowledge, no, I do not. Perhaps she should go to Bright Moon with you and let the mages there find the answers.”

“Then we should take her to—oh.” Castaspella seemed at a loss at having her suggestion preempted, then narrowed her eyes. “Why would you be so quick to let her go?”

Shadow Weaver shaped a rune and began clearing away the debris all over the floor, piling it in one corner. “Answers must be found, and they are not here. Most of the best mages in the world are in Bright Moon…myself excluded, of course. We can present it as Adora visiting the home of her future wife. I will serve as regent again until she recovers, and it will buy some time to repair the destruction in here.” She turned to Glimmer. “Do give your father my regards, Your Highness.”

Catra gently laid Adora on the floor and stood, the fur around her eyes matted with tears, and extended her claws. One pointed at Shadow Weaver. “You. You did this. I don’t know how, but you did this, and now you’re trying to cart Adora off and seize power again!”

“Being exposed to so much magic has made you delusional, Captain. The princess is in no fit state to rule, and Grayskull does not have the resources to help her. I am not _seizing_ power—”

Her explanation wasn’t good enough for Catra. She launched herself at Shadow Weaver with a snarl, claws outstretched, only to stop in midair when Shadow Weaver formed another rune. The momentum from her leap made her spin in place once before she managed to right herself, looking with wide eyes at the sickly yellow rune holding her in place. Shadow Weaver sighed. “You disappoint me,” she said, and snapped her fingers.

Lightning magic shot through the air and struck Catra in the chest, forcing out a scream that made Glimmer’s blood curdle until the muscles in her throat seized to silence. She writhed in the air, smoke rising from her body, until she collapsed on the floor as the stench of burnt fur filled over the room. Glimmer took a step toward her, sympathy panging in her chest despite their earlier unpleasantness, and then jumped back when Catra started moving again. She was still twitching as she forced herself toward Adora, sparks jumping from her body, and clasped her hand in the princess’s before she fell still. “Damn you,” Castaspella muttered.

“Make your preparations to leave. I will have your path to the outer gate cleared in an hour, so be ready.” Shadow Weaver smoothed out her robes as she made for the door, casting a single contemptuous glance over her shoulder. “And take her pet with you.”


	3. Chapter 3

Catra’s whole body burned the moment she awoke.

The heat wasn’t from the bar of sunlight filtering through the window in—wherever she was. It was roiling up from within her, pressing and pricking at her skin from the inside. She tried to scratch at the worst parts, only for her muscles to strain and twitch in protest, sore from disuse. Despite only just waking up, she was exhausted.

Slowly, Catra sat up, taking care not to overtax what little energy her body had, and looked around. She was alone in a carriage painted a cloying light pink, one that lacked any sort of raised seating in order to accommodate the litter she was on, beneath a soft, comfortable blanket. Her dress uniform clung to her where she had sweated through the shirt, and she clambered out of it in favor of a more casual outfit taken from her wardrobe, folded and laid at her side. When she had done the last fastening on the tunic with her shaking fingers, Catra pushed the blanket away. Her sword belt was nowhere to be found, she saw.

“Adora,” she said, her throat scraping. Catra took a waterskin that had been left with her clothes and found it mercifully full. As she drained it, fractured flashes of memory rushed back to her: the princess, her sword, Shadow Weaver’s damned magic. Little wonder her muscles were still aching with how much lightning had been shot into her. She shivered despite the persistent heat still creeping through her and reached for the carriage door, grasping at the latch. Her weight was against it by the time she managed to get it open, and Catra tumbled forward as she lost her balance. She landed in dirt on the side of a road, cheek scraping on the ground, until she picked herself up on all fours, and then stood upright. The heat on— _in_ —the back of her neck itched and sheared away her patience. “Adora!”

This didn’t look like Grayskull. Didn’t smell like it, either. The air was heavy with the scent of flowers unlike anything in the palace gardens, carried by a cool breeze emerging from a forest bordering one side of the road. Catra rubbed at a hot itch in her shoulder and tried to focus. The sound of a stream running nearby was tempting, but it was the voice she heard that she turned toward.

“…large training grounds, since I know you like to keep yourself busy.” Princess Glimmer’s voice. Catra glanced back at the carriage she had fallen out of, where she saw the sigil of the magocracy, the Moonstone hovering above its podium, painted on the side. Had that not been enough of a hint, the fact that it was floating off the ground without wheels—as was the next carriage forward in a train of three—would have been. Magic. She grimaced and followed the voice into the forest.

She didn’t have to go far. Glimmer was sitting against a tree near a bend in the stream Catra had heard before, looking down at a prone, sleeping Adora on a litter, covered by Catra’s cape. The Mystacori witch was there as well, holding one illuminated hand over the hollow of Adora’s throat. Catra’s claws extended and scraped against a branch as she shoved it out of her way. The princess looked up, one hand reaching for a staff laying at her side in the grass, but then relaxed when she saw who it was. “You’re finally awake,” she said, and then added, “Captain. How are you feeling?”

Catra ignored her for the moment and went to Adora as fast as her sore legs would carry her, kneeling down to check on her charge. She seemed to be sleeping peacefully, one hand gripped tightly around the fabric of the cape she was using as a blanket. The only thing out of place was the small blue rune rotating over her brow. “Magically induced sleep,” Glimmer said when Catra touched it. Her finger passed right through the interior sigil, making it ripple like disturbed water for a moment. “It seemed safest. My aunt and I don’t have the power to restrain her by ourselves if… _that_ happens again.”

“Is she all right? Can you wake her up?”

“I’ll see if Bow needs any help with the horses,” the witch said as she stood and swanned away, back toward the carriages. Catra’s fur bristled from her energy passing by. “Call if you need anything.”

Glimmer reshaped the rune on Adora’s brow, making it fade to a dull violet. “When it’s safe to do so, yes. Dispelling the charm to let her wake up isn’t hard. But as I said, this isn’t the time or place.”

She reached for a plate of food and offered it to Catra. Braised rabbit, not something she would have expected from the princess. “Go on, eat,” Glimmer said, and the growl in her stomach brooked no argument. Catra sat, took a haunch of meat, and ripped through it without a thought for elegance. A little overdone for her taste. When it was nothing but bone, Catra sighed and itched at her nape before stroking Adora’s hair.

“Where are we?” she asked.

“Westing Tammel, about a day from Bright Moon. The capital, not the magocracy itself. We crossed the border yesterday. Once we’re there, some of the more senior mages can hopefully tell us what happened to Adora—and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

Catra nodded once. The idea of more people like Shadow Weaver poking and prodding at Adora left a foul taste in her mouth, but better that than risk another destructive episode. She winced and scratched at her arms in a vain attempt to get at the itch harrying her. “You’re probably wondering why you’re so hot?” Glimmer asked, then pursed her lips when she realized her misstep. Catra raised an eyebrow. That would have been worth needling her for on any other day, but not now. “Er, it’s the magical healing. It makes the body warm up as it works. And since, as far as I know, you don’t have any magic of your own, your body isn’t used to dispersing the heat that builds up. So I can only heal you slowly, a little bit each day, to keep your body from cooking itself with how fast it’s knitting back together.”

“I know how it works, this isn’t the first time I’ve needed healing. That witch shot me full of lightning, so now you’re stuck dealing with it,” Catra said.

“Not to criticize other governments, much less my betrothed’s, but that woman…she feels wrong. Her energy doesn’t press out like a normal mage’s, it draws in. Like magical quicksand, sucking up everything around her. Leaving the room cold instead of warm.”

“Yes, she’s awful, I could have told you that.” Catra wiped some scraps of rabbit from her chin and let her hand slide down to her neck. She frowned. “How long has it been? Since we left Grayskull?”

“Three days.”

Catra put her hand out. “Knife. My knife, yours, just give me something with an edge.”

Glimmer hesitated, weighing the wisdom of asking why she wanted one, then reached toward her staff again. Catra’s sword belt was there in the grass as well, she realized, and Glimmer removed the dirk opposite her sword. “I’m not much for blades, this is the only thing I have on hand…”

She snatched it from Glimmer and hurried over to the river, where she knelt, pushed back her hair, and looked into the water. Little dark patches were spotting in the fur on her throat where her mane was coming in, wrapping around to the rest of her hair. Catra growled and dipped one edge of the dirk in the river before holding it to her neck and drawing it down.

Her skin scraped painfully with each pass of an implement so poorly suited for the task, but the alternative was leaving it be, and that wasn’t acceptable. Catra watched the darker fur fall into the river and float downstream before it disappeared around a bend. She sighed. Her Royal Sparkliness didn’t have to put up with this every day. Even if she did, having no shortage of magical servants falling over themselves to help her would have surely blunted the tiresome inconvenience. But she didn’t need it. Even out here in the middle of nowhere Glimmer was all too prim and proper, statelier, prettier than her—

Catra yowled as the dirk bit into her skin. She clapped her free hand to her neck to try and head off the pain, but it ached and bled into her palm regardless. This was all she needed, truly. Catra leaned over the river and splashed water on the wound until she was confident that it was no longer bleeding, then finished the rest with as much economy as she could manage. Princess Glimmer was getting to her feet when Catra returned, stretching so that her shimmersilk robe sat flush against the front of her body. She looked at the wet smudge on Catra’s throat, where more blood might have been beading up, but didn’t call attention to it. “We ought to be moving on,” she said, shouldering Catra’s sword belt.

“You have something of mine.”

If Glimmer read more than one meaning into that, she didn’t show it. “You’re in no fit state to fight anything, this is one of the safest parts of Bright Moon, and…I would appreciate if I had a bit more time to examine the spells on this sword. It’s fascinating.”

“It’s _mine_.”

“And if I was busy studying this, I imagine I would be too preoccupied to ride in Adora’s carriage with her,” Glimmer said wryly, shaping a rune that floated Adora’s litter into the air at waist-level. “Leaving some empty space in there. A roughly person-sized space.”

Catra tapped one heel into the ground, then handed over the dirk so Glimmer could put it back in its sheath. “Fine. And I’m not an idiot, I don’t need you to spell out an insinuation.”

They walked back to the carriage train with Adora between them. Catra laid one hand on Adora’s, and Glimmer made a small discomfited sound. “If I may,” she began.

“I’m only a lowly guard, I can’t tell you what you may or may not.”

“Yes, well.” Glimmer slowed her pace, which slowed Adora’s pace and forced Catra to match it if she didn’t want to slip away from her charge. “Based on the last day we were in Grayskull, I think I’ve put together that Adora hadn’t shared the details of our betrothal with you. The understanding we reached.”

Catra’s stomach roiled. “Must we discuss this…”

“We must, because you won’t get away with attacking me in Bright Moon the way you did before.” Catra rather thought she had a strong argument for that being mutual combat, but no one in the magocracy was going to split those hairs, so she said nothing. “Adora made her expectations of any marriage very clear, one of those being that she continue her relationship with you unimpeded. I don’t know how I missed it when she spent half our time together talking about you, but at any rate, I agreed.”

“Oh.”

Catra sighed. Why hadn’t Adora just told her that? How much worry could she have been spared, how much sleep might she not have lost? But Adora always wanted to do things on her own. Always wanted to keep the stress and strain for herself, no matter who was there to help her. Perhaps she hadn’t wanted to get Catra’s hopes up if Glimmer hadn’t agreed, but it was still a damned foolish thing to do. “Oh,” she said again.

“I realize it must not be easy to accept the idea of her…with someone else, but we need this alliance. The trade, the defense pact. All of it. So I’m going through with this, even if it might hurt.”

How easy for her to say, Catra thought. It wasn’t hurting _her_.

Glimmer’s guard and aunt were finishing up with the four palfreys pulling the first carriage in the train, the only one of the three with actual wheels. Part of the second carriage’s sidewall opened so that Adora’s litter could slide into place inside. Glimmer put the wall back into place as Catra opened the door and began to climb in. “You didn’t answer my question,” she said.

“Which was?”

“How are you feeling?”

Catra looked over her shoulder at the princess. Whatever had spurred this faux concern, she wasn’t interested in indulging it. “Fine,” Catra said. “Never better.”

“I’m sure. We’ll be stopping at sunset, we can try a bit more healing then now that you’re conscious. Do you have any requests for supper? We don’t have too much variety, but Bow and I could make a few things with our supplies.”

It was such a strange question that Catra was altogether unsure of how to respond for a moment. “No, nothing in particular,” she eventually managed to say.

“Call if you need something.”

Princess Glimmer went to the lead carriage and climbed up, hanging off the side to speak with her guard on the forward seat. Catra lingered, watching her, trying to make sense of her, before shaking her head and closing the carriage door. She curled up at Adora’s feet as they began moving, following the rotation of the violet sigil over Adora’s head until her eyes grew heavy.

⁂

The rest of their journey passed in uncomfortable silence. Catra submitted to Glimmer’s healing that night and the next morning without resistance, trembling from the sickly almost-pain of feeling her body recovering faster than it was meant to, while she watched over Adora. The princess occasionally joined her in Adora’s carriage, sitting vigil in what little space Catra could make for her. Despising her was difficult when her concern about Adora seemed so genuine. And her magical energy, Catra had to admit, felt very different from Shadow Weaver’s. Rather than a vague sense of fatigue, her presence seemed to lend Catra some strength and soothe the heat left in the wake of her healing.

Not that she was going to tell Glimmer any of that.

They passed under the west gate of Bright Moon on the afternoon of the fourth day after setting out from Grayskull. Catra’s fur bristled as the roads became more crowded around them with magic users. She brushed Adora’s hair from her face as she looked out the carriage window. The colors of the buildings and the brickwork in the roads were brighter than the kinds used in Grayskull, giving the place a warmer feel—though, Catra conceded, that may well have been another effect of the healing.

Some of the passersby paid the carriages deference, but many more went on with their days. Not what Catra would have expected in her homeland, but the magocracy had always been considered a bit akilter compared to other states. When they reached the palace, an elegant collection of spires perched atop a hill at the city center with the Moonstone floating high above them, matters of protocol and propriety reasserted themselves. Glimmer’s guard led the carriages toward a stable, and Catra finally had to slip into her own space to change into something more formal than a traveling tunic. Adora’s litter was sliding through its hatch when Catra reemerged, hair hastily tied back with a length of silk, floating again courtesy of Princess Glimmer. Her cape had been folded neatly beside Adora’s head and replaced with a regular blanket.

“Study time’s over,” Catra said as she took her cape and tied it to hang off one shoulder. “I need my sword back.”

Reluctantly, Glimmer returned her sword belt with everything in place, and Catra buckled it about her waist as she fell in at Adora’s side. The weight on her hip was comfortably familiar, and a reassuring calm washed over her when she was able to rest her hand on the hilt again. “You’re sure there are people here who can help Adora?” Catra asked.

“I can’t think of anywhere with more qualified scholars and healers.”

She didn’t say _yes_ , which left Catra somewhat wanting for confidence. Still, it wasn’t as if they were replete with options. Whatever had happened was some kind of magic, and Bright Moon had magic to spare. Unless they were willing to make a longer trek to Mystacor, this was the best place to be. Even if it meant dealing with certain princesses who were as intrusive as they were sparkly.

Glimmer’s guard and aunt fell in behind them, and though some of the sentries within the palace were obviously uneasy about an armed stranger walking around, the princess’s presence kept any of them from waylaying their group. Catra glanced over Adora’s litter at her. She had changed as well when they arrived at her home, donning a soft pink cloak slashed with indigo highlights and blazoned with her personal arms, the Moonstone adorned with the coronet of the heir apparent. With a ripple of displeasure, Catra saw that she also wore a pair of earrings studded with Grayskull onyx. A gift, doubtless.

They were admitted without delay to the throne room, a cavernous space that left Catra wondering where they were in the palace. This was above ground level, they had gone up a grand spiraling staircase and there was no shortage of windows showing the cloudless sky around them, but she hadn’t seen this room on their approach. It may well have been bigger within than it appeared from without thanks to some spell beyond her imagining, but that thought made her head hurt, and in any event she wasn’t there to appreciate the architecture.

The throne on which the queen sat floated above a platform which itself hung over empty air, as did the platforms leading to it, forcing supplicants and petitioners to place their faith in the spells holding them aloft in order to approach her. Queen Angella watched them approach, impassively surveying each member of their group. Catra struggled with the simultaneous feelings of awe and unease. The queen was obviously not…human, nor any other race Catra knew of. Her skin was a fair, almost translucent violet, her arms and legs were just slightly too long for the rest of her body by Catra’s understanding of proportion, and the dual tones of pink and purple of her hair fell between a pair of great white wings. Catra took her hand from her sword and looked sidelong at Glimmer. She had obviously inherited her looks from her father, King Micah, sitting beside the queen. Another witch. Shadow Weaver’s star pupil. Catra frowned.

“Glimmer,” the queen said with something approaching warmth. Her voice seemed to echo, but before the sound actually left her mouth. How unsettling could one person be? She looked at Adora’s litter, then Catra. “We thought you were staying in Grayskull until the wedding. You _did_ secure the betrothal, didn’t you?”

The princess stepped up to the edge of the throne room, in front of the steps floating over empty air, and bowed. “Mother, Father. I’m glad to see you both again. The betrothal did go through, as you requested. But there were, ah, complications.”

“Are you all right?” King Micah asked, leaning forward on his throne.

“She’s the one walking. I imagine she means the unconscious girl there.”

“That’s Princess Adora, Mother,” she said. The queen’s look of benign disinterest turned to concern. “As I said, complications.”

Glimmer provided a surprisingly judicious recount of events, introducing Catra in the process while leaving out their spar. From her expression and the way her gaze flitted over to Catra every so often, it seemed the queen knew she was only being told most of the truth, but she didn’t press for what had incited Adora. Both she and the king cringed when Glimmer mentioned Shadow Weaver, which made Catra feel the smallest bit better. She looked down at Adora, at the little rune keeping her asleep, and gently touched her shoulder.

“Catra was good enough to let me borrow her sword on the journey here, but I wasn’t able to learn anything useful. The spells on the blade are woven deep into the metal and so powerful that I could only study it for short periods before my head began to ache.”

“I see,” the queen said. She turned the full force of her attention on Catra for the first time, almost crushing in its intensity. “Come here, child.”

The thought of _not_ obeying never crossed her mind. Catra’s feet were simply carrying her forward before she had a chance to think of it. She was beside Glimmer after a moment, and in her haste to avert her gaze from the queen she made the mistake of looking down. Nothing but empty air all the way to the ground far below. She clutched her stomach, suddenly dizzy.

“Ah. Magicats don’t like heights, do they…it’s been so long since I’ve seen your kind. My apologies.”

Angella stood and came down to meet her. Each time she stepped on another freestanding platform, it sank slightly before accommodating her weight. Catra would never understand so much faith in magic. She backed up to make space for the queen, who towered over even the sentries dotting the room. “The sword, if you please.”

“Can you help Adora?”

The queen pursed her lips, clearly unused to not being obeyed right away. She looked at Adora, still there on the litter, and gave Catra a soft pat on the head. It should have felt insulting, not maternal and vaguely comforting. “I believe we can. Once we know what kind of magic affected her, and I should be able to tell that by the enchantments used to stop it.”

“Right.” Catra drew her sword from its sheath, slow enough that the guards wouldn’t misinterpret the gesture. Everyone but her and Glimmer’s guard winced as it came free. Even Catra felt it now as she handed it over, with her body still buzzing from Glimmer’s healing. Angella balanced the flat of the blade on her forearm to study it. The king joined her, as did the crown princess and her little coterie, leaving Catra free to return to Adora’s side. One hand slipped under the blanket to clasp Adora’s hand and she whispered, “It’ll be all right.”

Angella took her time looking over each facet of the sword, occasionally consulting her husband and his sister in hushed tones. “Where…did you get this?” she asked.

Catra shrugged. “Shadow Weaver gave it to me one day, I thought it was something she took from the armory. She was lying, wasn’t she? When she said it was just _some_ sword with enchantments?”

“These are ancient spells. Magic from before the empire collapsed and its successor states developed their own disparate traditions, woven together very tightly, each requiring several prodigious mages to imbue.” Angella drew one finger along the length of the blade, making bright blue energy crackle in its wake. “Your princess, is she a blood descendant of your first sovereign?”

“Yes? As far as I know?”

The queen nodded and approached Adora to return Catra’s sword. That it was likely the Protector’s Sword, lost for so long, seemed remarkably unimportant now. “The dynasty that ruled the empire of the First Ones did so with the power of their bloodline. The power that caused what you saw in Grayskull. Even after their last dynast rebelled and shattered the empire, it must have persisted through the generations. Without any knowledge of it, it would have laid dormant until something brought it to the fore. Some kind of stressor.” Catra looked at Glimmer, who folded her arms. “And this sword is the conduit for controlling all of that power. Its spells moderate and direct the magic in her blood, preventing her from drawing on too much at once. Without it, the magic would overwhelm her and leave her running rampant. She’ll have to keep it close at hand from now on.”

Catra’s tail flicked as she picked up on what the queen was saying. “It _is_ close at hand. Because I have it.”

“We can find you another magic sword. For now…we should revive Princess Adora. Unless something excites her again, she should be all right for the time being. Explaining this will take some time. Perhaps a less overwhelming venue would be more appropriate,” Angella said. “The guest quarters, I think. Can I trust you to handle this, Glimmer? I have to meet with the head of the artificer’s guild.”

The princess’s unease was evident, especially after being unable to stop Adora’s rampancy the last time, but she only nodded. “Yes, Mother. Bow and I will set her up in the south wing.”

“Mind that you see to _both_ of your guests, dear.”

“Right…it’s this way.”

Glimmer led them out of the throne room and down another corridor. High, vaulted ceilings and bright stone wall dotted with alcoves filled by statues didn’t give Catra the impression of a castle as she knew it. But then, Grayskull was a purely functional construction, designed to turn away sieges and stop advancing armies. This place was a testament to some nebulous idea of magical power.

“So,” Bow said, keeping pace with Catra on the other side of Adora’s litter, “how long have you secretly had the sword that everyone in your country thinks was lost for centuries?”

“I didn’t _secretly_ have it, I didn’t even know what it was! You heard Shadow Weaver. Every other sword in Grayskull has the same design.” Catra huffed, then drummed her fingers along the hilt. “Four or five years now, I suppose? I’ve only really taken it out for cleaning and maintenance. No one told me what it was before all of this. Well, Shadow Weaver warned me not to lose it or I’d have to guard Adora with a dinner knife, but I thought that was only her being her usual terrible self.”

Glimmer brought them to a residential wing, stopping at a door at the end of the hall to lead them in. The décor of the guest apartments was a bit saccharine for Catra’s taste, with colors out of a pastel painting and a balcony that ran the length of the exterior wall, but Adora would like it, surely. “Shouldn’t we have some backup? Isn’t that why you wanted to wait until we were here to wake her?” Catra asked.

“As long as you’re ready with the sword we should be all right, and I can call the guards if we need to, but my mother said she should be fine if nothing works her up again. Ready?”

Bow laid a hand on Glimmer’s shoulder, ready to yank her back if need be, while Catra gripped her sword’s hilt. Was it even right to think of it as _her_ sword? By rights Adora ought to have it, it was her family’s ancestral weapon, but she was the one who knew its weight and reach. She was the one who needed something more substantial than her claws to protect her charge.

Catra shook her head clear. She couldn’t worry about that now. “Do it.”

Princess Glimmer ignited a faint light on the tips of her first two fingers, tracing violet lines through the empty air until they shaped a rune reminiscent of the one on Adora’s brow. The two sigils met and resolved into a more complex design before winking out of existence. Catra’s skin prickled as the magic dispersed into the air. “Adora?” she asked, leaning closer. “How long does it take people to wake up from this?”

“Depends on the person.”

It took a moment, but Adora did eventually stir, sitting up and stretching with the largest yawn Catra had ever seen from her. She blushed when she opened her eyes, then tried and failed a few times to say something as she looked at her unfamiliar surroundings, before her gaze fell on Catra. Adora had barely started to crack a smile before Catra fell on her, embracing her so tightly that Adora might have snapped in two had she squeezed any harder. “Hey, what—what’s happening?”

Catra held her until Glimmer cleared her throat, and then reluctantly dislodged from her so that Adora could shift about and sit on the edge of the litter. She tried to stand up, but her legs refused to bear the weight, and Catra had to grab her and sit her back down before she fell. “It’s…a long story.”

The last thing Adora remembered was Glimmer and Bow barging into her apartments, leaving Catra and Glimmer to explain everything that had happened since. Adora’s face colored when they described the way she had all but demolished her rooms and tossed Catra about like a ragdoll. “I’m sorry,” she said, stroking some of the fur on the back of Catra’s hand. How very like her to have one of the first things out of her mouth be an apology. “I’m so sorry.”

“You’re all right now. That’s all I care about.”

Glimmer explained most of the magical nonsense that happened afterward, including the queen’s theorizing. Adora listened attentively, looking down at her hands every so often and balling them into fists. When she was all caught up, she asked, “I’ve been asleep for four days? I’m still so tired…”

“We call it sleep, but it’s more like stasis,” Glimmer said. “It’s normal to have to sleep normally afterward. I can have another room made up for your guard across the—”

“I’m fine in here.”

Catra planted herself on the litter beside Adora. Glimmer frowned, but wisely realized this wasn’t a fight she could win. “Very well,” Glimmer said, her voice tight. “I need to go to the Moonstone, but I’ll come back afterward. It should take two hours or so. If you need anything before then, that rope there on the wall will call a servant. I do hope you’ll enjoy your time in Bright Moon.”

Glimmer had the gall to take Adora’s hand and lightly kiss the backs of her fingers. Catra’s eye twitched, but she said nothing as their hosts quit the room and left them alone. She turned to Adora and pecked her cheek, as if trying to outdo Glimmer. “How are you feeling?”

“Like I would badly want a bath if I didn’t think I would pass out in the tub.”

“Later. I imagine they must have magic water here that heats itself or some such…let’s get you in a proper bed for now.” Catra slung one of Adora’s arms over her shoulders and helped her stand, then walked her slowly to a large bed set beside a window overlooking the southern part of the capital and the hinterlands beyond. The angle, thankfully, didn’t allow for anyone to look down. Adora rolled onto her side and looked up at Catra with glassy, half-open eyes and smiled. “I’ll look over the rest of the rooms. You relax. Take a nap.”

Hopefully a deep nap, one that could persist through Glimmer coming back. Catra started to step away, only for Adora to grab her hand. “Wait. Have to talk to you. About…you know. The betrothal.”

“Let me make a sweep of the rooms first.”

Catra didn’t only want to do her job, but also needed a moment to collect her thoughts on the matter. Everything Glimmer had told her on the road rattled around in her head as she poked into every nook and cranny around the apartments. Agreeing to Adora’s terms was one thing; abiding by them was quite another. She might have said anything to mollify Catra when they were alone in the forest, or made whatever agreement she needed to secure the betrothal that she’d admitted Bright Moon needed. But Catra knew her senses didn’t lie. She’d seen the way Glimmer looked at Adora, heard the way her voice heightened when they spoke, smelled the shift in her scent—all of it. All pointing to the simple fact that whether or not she respected the relationship Adora already had, she intended to carve out one of her own.

Catra closed the wardrobe in the dressing room. She wasn’t going to let _that_ happen.

“Everything seems fine,” she said as she returned to Adora’s bedside. The princess shuffled back to make room for her, and Catra happily climbed in and nuzzled Adora’s cheek before cuddling her against her chest. “We spoke on the way here. Princess Glimmer and I.”

“Oh…then she told you? What she agreed to?”

“She did.” Catra stroked the nape of Adora’s neck. “I wish I had been able to hear it from you first, and not just you asking me to trust you. Trust is not a rare commodity between us, so the delay seemed strange. Worrying.”

Adora slowly melted against her, one hand draping over Catra’s waist and drawing a circle on the small of her back. “I didn’t want to get your hopes up in the middle of the week and then have to go back on my word if I couldn’t persuade her. The idea was to sit you both down after she agreed so we could talk it out together, but the scheduling changed, she had an appointment to keep with some of the mages in Grayskull that night. So I _thought_ doing it the next day would be fine after it had been announced, but…well.” She burrowed deeper into Catra’s clothes. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to worry you.”

“There’s nothing to do for it now, I suppose. But for the future, I can stomach disappointment better than I can stew in uncertainty.” Catra kissed the crown of her head. “Now get some rest, I’m sure the witches here will have all sorts of questions for you later—and you really don’t want to be exhausted when you meet the queen. Go on, sleep. I’ll keep watch.”

She did nod off eventually, her warm breath rolling over Catra’s tunic as Catra watched the door with half-awake attentiveness, the tip of her tail touching the floor to pick up any nearby footsteps. For now, though, the only thing she felt was the steady, vital cadence of Adora’s heartbeat.

Catra knew she would have to countenance the meddling of mages and witches if Adora was to recover from whatever had seized her in Grayskull, she could make her peace with that. Eventually. But if the magic was as ancient and complex as the queen suggested, then it was sure to take a good deal of time, which meant being here for a good deal of time, and Princess Glimmer was sure to try and monopolize the remainder of her free hours erelong. And that, Catra thought as the wheels turned in her mind, she did not have to suffer.


	4. Chapter 4

Catra perched herself on the Bright Moon battlements overlooking the mustering yard, most of which had been converted into a training ground for Adora. Her tail flicked slowly over the empty air as she watched the princess cut through a crowd of magical constructs with the Protector’s Sword, throwing back several at once before they winked out of existence. Without pausing to ensure they had been destroyed, Adora tried to stab at another and threw herself off-balance in the process. Catra shook her head. The slender saber she sometimes practiced with was designed for thrusting and slashing, and she hadn’t yet wrapped her head around the fact that the real Protector’s Sword was designed more for heavy cleaving strikes.

The tip of the sword ran through one construct and speared another behind it, reducing them both to fading starbursts. Design or not, Adora could attack however she wanted with that much power behind her. Catra canted her hips to shift her weight, then remembered that she no longer had a sword at her hip to account for just as she overcorrected.

She tumbled down the inside of the palace’s curtain wall with a strangled yowl, and only righted herself once she had pushed herself away from the stone and had space to counterbalance with her tail. Thankfully no one saw her hit the ground, on her hands and feet but rougher than she would have liked, and Catra steadied herself against a crate as she stood until her legs stopped shaking and her nerves subsided. She could still salvage some dignity from this. As far as anyone else knew, she had taken the stairs nearby, or hopped down intentionally.

Adora skimmed the point of her sword against the ground as she drew it forward for an upward strike until it crashed into the last construct, forcing it into the air where it dissolved into light before it had the chance to come back down. She hefted the sword up onto her shoulder and struck a victorious pose, making the muscles in her arm flex. Catra’s legs shook again, but no longer from nerves.

Her mood cooled when she saw Princess Glimmer going up to Adora to review her performance on that magic writing slate of hers. Adora started to concentrate on the numbers Glimmer was showing in her, at which point light wreathed her and returned her to her normal size. The Protector’s Sword, now out of proportion compared to its wielder, slid from Adora’s shoulder and almost hit the ground before she yanked it back up and sheathed it.

Glimmer was rattling off numbers when Catra sauntered over and wrapped her tail around Adora’s wrist. She leaned into the feeling, then righted herself when Glimmer looked up from her slate and pursed her lips. “Oh, you’re here, Captain.”

“Getting tired of me?” Catra asked, knowing full well she was too prim and proper to answer honestly. Glimmer offered a thin smile instead while Catra rested her hand on the small of Adora’s back, making her stand up a little straighter. “How long did you stay transformed this time?”

Admittedly it didn’t help her concentration for Catra to let her hand go wandering up Adora’s back, but there was such a nice tone coming in between her shoulders that it would have been a crime not to explore it. And she was planning on doing just that, once they had a bit more privacy—and fewer interruptions. “I think it was about an hour,” Adora said quietly.

This could work, then. Catra leaned closer to her charge, smirking at seeing Glimmer’s annoyance out of the corner of her eye as she whispered to Adora, “Don’t wear yourself out, that’s my job.”

She made a small circle on Adora’s back with her finger and then slipped away, letting her stew in that and ensuring that whatever she was planning on doing this afternoon with Glimmer would be overshadowed by the prospect of what they would be doing tonight. Catra felt a glare burning on the back of her neck, but unless Glimmer wanted a rematch, there wasn’t much she could do. Let her glare if it made her feel better. Catra made one stop in the kitchens to pilfer a bottle of wine before heading up the central spire’s main staircase.

⁂

“Oh, do you remember the time Lonnie smacked the ambassador from the Crimson Waste because he looked like Kyle from behind?”

“How could I forget? I can still hear that sound she made when he turned around. It was probably the high point of the whole night,” Catra said through a chuckle as she swirled her wine. She’d opted for a second glass and had nursed it for the better part of an hour, leaving her not quite drunk but not quite sober, either. At least uninhibited enough to ask for this. Not that she needed the help, she told herself—it just made the idea easier. She wasn’t nervous. Not at all.

Catra took another sip of her wine.

At the other end of the sofa, Adora had only the slightest rosy tint to her cheeks—knowing this place, the wine was likely enchanted to keep people from getting too carried away—as she finished her first drink and set her glass aside. “We’re lucky he had a good sense of humor about it,” she said. Catra prodded at Adora’s leg with her foot to prompt her, and she shifted across the space between them until she was cuddled into Catra’s side. Adora looked up and brushed her cheek over the fur on Catra’s arm. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

One claw winding over Adora’s nape was enough to make her sigh in contentment and curl in closer, draping one arm over Catra’s waist as she did. This was likely to be her best chance to ask, since waiting any longer ran the risk of having Adora fall asleep against her. “So that big magic version of you, do you think you could pull it out whenever you wanted?”

Adora shifted a little, pushing against the cushion at her back. “I don’t see why not?” She gestured vaguely toward a table nearby, where her sword belt was hung over the back of a chair. “Having the sword nearby helps.”

“Is it good for anything besides fighting…?” Catra asked, drawing out the words to make sure her point landed. The rest of her claws ghosted up and down Adora’s spine.

“Maybe if you needed something heavy moved—oh. _Oh_.”

Her face colored slightly, but she shifted more of her weight onto Catra all the same. “That didn’t occur to me,” Adora mumbled. Her back arched when Catra applied a bit more pressure with her claws.

“Well, you don’t get to see a seven-foot version of yourself who looks like she could punch through a castle wall if it annoyed her.” Catra leaned down and nipped at Adora’s ear. “But I do. So it did occur to me.”

Adora’s hand tightened on her waist. “Is that something you’re interested in trying?”

“Figured it was worth asking. Not interested?”

“I didn’t say that, but it’s…intense, I think that’s the best way I can put it? I don’t just get bigger, she wants to be in charge,” Adora said, shivering when Catra hiked up her doublet and started running her claws over bare skin. “You might not be the one making the decisions if I let her out.”

Catra cocked an eyebrow. “Is she some separate person?”

“No, it’s still me. Mostly. My thoughts are different, it’s hard to explain. But you might find me a little…demanding.”

“You, making demands in bed?” Catra asked with a grin. “I’d like to see that.”

She laced her words with the usual levity, but she very much did want to see that. It was all well and good to be the one who always took the lead, but Catra could admit some mild curiosity about being the one led for once. Adora dislodged herself from between Catra and the back of the sofa and sat up, working out a kink in her neck before she stood. Catra watched with barely-veiled interest, tail flicking back and forth, as Adora went to pick up the Protector’s Sword. It still stirred some feelings of possessiveness to see anyone else handling it, but Catra could stand to set that aside for the moment.

“Stop me if it’s too much,” Adora said, sliding the sword from its sheath.

“I’m not made of glass, you know.”

Light subsumed Adora until she was only a brilliant silhouette, throwing off colors like the core of a blazing fire. When it faded, Adora’s pale blue doublet was gone, replaced by the stark white and gold ensemble the magic saw fit to bestow on her—though it lacked sleeves, leaving any wandering eye free to study the dips and curves of muscle in her arms. Adora looked over her shoulder slowly, deliberately, until her gaze could fix on Catra. Her chest drew tight.

* * *

Adora set the sword aside and turned around, looking almost predatory as she loped toward Catra. She stood up while Adora closed the distance, but it made little difference. Normally she was only slightly shorter than Adora, but now she didn’t even come up to Adora’s collarbone. A larger hand than Catra was used to brushed over her hair and thumbed at one of her ears, making it twitch. “Well?” Adora asked. Her voice had dropped an octave. “Is this what you wanted?”

She didn’t seem all that different from how she was regularly. Catra steered Adora back onto the sofa, where their new height difference was less pronounced, and settled in her lap. Her hands traced up Adora’s sides before slipping to her arms, which she tensed for Catra’s benefit. “What, are you made from stone when you’re like this?” Catra asked, raking up to her shoulders and drawing up gooseflesh in the wake of her claws. Adora only smirked. “What’s so funny?”

“Just letting you have your fun before I have you stand up.”

“Mm, and what if I’m comfortable here?” Catra kissed and bit at Adora’s throat and leaned defiantly against her, poking at this supposed demanding streak. The simple order of their relationship—Adora gave the orders outside of their bedroom and Catra gave the orders within it—made it seem foolish to just roll over and allow her to take the lead.

Without warning, one firm hand slid under her rear as Adora stood, taking Catra with her. She reflexively clung to Adora, arms locking around her neck while her legs tried to find purchase around Adora’s waist. “I wasn’t planning on asking,” she whispered against Catra’s ear. Her voice rumbled down through Catra, fading to a tremble in her chest and making her fur bristle. “You look so cute when you don’t know what to do.”

Adora carried her effortlessly to the doorway separating the sitting room and bedroom, pressing her back to the stone with only enough force to keep her there. Catra wrapped her tail around Adora’s leg. “Such a pretty kitty,” she said, and nudged one thigh between Catra’s legs before grinding her slowly up and down. A weak, traitorous whine cracked out of her throat as Adora hit just the right spots, and she clutched harder at Adora as her hips rocked forward. “ _Needy_ kitty. But I can indulge you…if you ask nicely. Hmm? Will you give me a little purr and ask nicely?”

“You’re really milking this…”

For a moment Adora didn’t respond, simply looking over Catra with the same cool, predatory look as before, then ground Catra against her thigh with torturous slowness. The friction worked her to arousal, pressing back against the solid muscle, and no sooner had Catra closed her eyes to savor the feeling than Adora whipped them around and planted her firmly on the bed. Freed of having to hold her up, Adora grasped the bottom of Catra’s doublet and tugged it over her head, stopping when it was covering her eyes to lean down and brush their lips together. Much as she tried to wriggle free, Adora’s grasp was firm enough that she was effectively blinded. The loss of control made her stomach twist in a strange, pleasant way.

“Maybe,” Adora said when she drifted down Catra’s body, biting at her collarbone before moving further down. She kissed at the softer fur on Catra’s chest until her teeth closed around one nipple. The mingled pain and pleasure made her back arch as she tried again to get her head out from under her doublet so she could watch, but Adora wasn’t inclined to let her go. Her tongue swiped languorously over Catra’s nipple. “Maybe it’s just so rare to have you at my mercy that I want to enjoy the feeling. You always seem to like it when you’re in charge.”

The pressure holding her doublet in place disappeared, and Catra scrambled to do away with it so she could see what was going on. There was a retort brewing on her lips, but it fell apart when she saw that Adora had dispensed with her clothes. Catra was on the verge of sitting up and feeling around the plane of muscle on her stomach when Adora flipped her onto her stomach. “Oh, I see why you like this view,” Adora drawled. She ran one finger up Catra’s spine and chuckled at the way her back arched in response, then kissed the spot on her nape where her finger stopped. Her body weight rested on Catra, pressing her slightly into the bed. Catra’s breath rolled over the bedsheets, and a vague exhilaration accompanied the effort for the next one. Adora kissed the crook of Catra’s neck and tugged the skin between her teeth. “This is what you get to see every night? Me squirming underneath you?”

Catra nodded, and a low hum shook through Adora’s chest and down into her body. She rocked her hips into the bedsheets, trying to find some sort of friction, before the pressure on her body relented and she could suck in a breath as Adora reversed the path she had taken. Now she slid her hands down Catra’s back, applying enough pressure to massage the muscles they settled on, before coming to the waistband of her trousers and the divot cut out of the back for her tail. She flicked gently at the end while tugging off Catra’s trousers with her other hand. When they had been tossed clear across the room, Adora squeezed at Catra’s thighs, rubbing her thumbs back and forth over the wiry muscle there. When she grasped the base of Catra’s tail, carefully enough not to damage anything but firmly enough to make her presence known, Catra almost implored her to stop—indeed, a bit of the normal Adora’s concern shone through on her face when Catra looked over her shoulder and nodded for her to continue. She stroked the sensitive fur there, careful not to grip too hard or pet the wrong way, while Catra luxuriated on the cusp of oversensitization. Her hips canted from side to side, toes curling, fingers bunching up in the sheets as she tried to resolve the overwhelming feeling of such a delicate part of her body being handled.

When it did finally tip more toward pain than pleasure, Catra reached back and tapped a few times at Adora’s leg. She stopped and released her tail, choosing instead to smooth out the fur on Catra’s back and rear before turning her over again. It was an intensely…vulnerable feeling, being moved about so easily, and it put her in her nerves somewhat. Adora dragged her hand between Catra’s legs and up to her shaft, closing her fingers and stroking enough to make Catra rock her hips. “Are you ready to ask nicely for what you want?”

She didn’t trust herself to say anything coherent at this point. Instead Catra stuck out her tongue, defaulting to defiance, and Adora shifted closer to her on the bed. “I was hoping that would be the case,” Adora said with a wicked grin while she swung one leg over Catra. “Let’s see if you can do anything more useful with that tongue.”

Transformation or not, Adora still tasted the same. She kept most of her weight on her knees, forcing Catra to pitch her head up to sink into her until Adora’s hands threaded into her hair and provided some support. She alternated between swiping her tongue in the ways that always got good reactions and holding it still while Adora rolled her hips back and forth, doing her best all the while to keep up. A long, low moan answered Catra when she circled Adora’s clit with the tip of her tongue and then slowly flattened it, and she wrapped her hands around Adora’s thighs to try and tug her down a bit more. It was a fruitless effort, but hardly wasted when she had the chance to fondle the muscle there.

The cool, disinterested front Adora had affected cracked somewhat when her hips began to twitch, and Catra kept up her ministrations until the taunting rocking of her hips became needful, until the hands in her hair tightened and Adora’s legs pressed harder at the sides of her head. Arousal smeared down Catra’s lips and chin, sweet and sticky, until Adora held her head still and thrusted her hips up to Catra’s mouth. She kept at Adora as her tongue grew sore, as the hands in her hair loosened and began smoothing the locks she had moved out of place. “Good girl,” Adora said, with the merest bit of unsteadiness in her voice. “Good girl…”

Catra preened and let her head drop back to the sheets as Adora relaxed, shifting back enough to lean down and draw some of her arousal from Catra’s face. When her fingers shone, she circled Catra’s lips, barely pressing until Catra opened her mouth and let her in. Adora grinned. “Don’t you look nice when you’re taking orders like a good little guard,” she said. Catra growled around her fingers, and she heaved an exaggerated sigh.

Adora shifted farther back, until she was resting on Catra’s hips. By now all she had to do was shift one way or another to make Catra wince and whine, leaving her so close and still denying her. And she was enjoying it, far too much.

“Can you cooperate now?” Adora asked, toying with a tuft of fur on Catra’s stomach. “We both know what you want, you just have to say it. Say please, and I’ll give it to you.”

She squirmed under Adora’s teasing, torn between wanting to see what would happen if she stayed recalcitrant and desperately wanting release. The low, pleasant ache that pricked at her the next time Adora moved decided for her. “Please,” Catra mumbled.

“ _Please_ what?”

“Oh, you’re evil when you’re like this…”

“I did try to warn you,” Adora said, showing a hint of teeth when she smiled.

Catra began to sit up, only to have Adora easily push her back down. She _did_ warn her. Adora had warned her, and she’d still asked for this. The tinge of desperation in her thoughts—it was now less a desire to be with Adora than an overriding need—salved the wound to her pride when she let herself purr and beg in the sweetest voice she could muster, “Please make love to me, Adora.”

“A little formal for begging, but it’ll do.” Adora angled her hips back, one hand planted on the bed for support, and slowly eased herself onto Catra. She hissed in satisfaction, blowing out her breath between her teeth, as Catra arched her back and melted into Adora’s warmth. Between the heat and pressure, she had to fight not to snap upward for fear that she simply wouldn’t last. Savoring this was worth more than quick gratification, she told herself.

Though Adora made that choice for her after a moment. Once she had acclimated to the feeling, Adora found an indulgent rhythm that sped up and slowed down on a whim, without any logic to when she would stop or start. Catra tried to meet her thrusts as best she could without losing control, but at no point was it up to her. Adora leaned down over her and Catra stole a kiss, no longer worrying about seeming needy. Her feet were already kicking into the bed with the effort of maintaining her stamina, there wasn’t room for any other thoughts. Catra raked at Adora’s back to keep her there, where she had to slow her pace, but she lacked the leverage she needed. Adora reared back and took Catra with her, pulling them both into a sitting position. Every muscle in Catra’s body tensed. The sudden shift in angle, combined with the renewed pace, was just too much. “Adora,” Catra said, tapping between her shoulder blades, but she made no motion to stop. “Hey, this was your rule—”

“Shh.”

Adora returned Catra’s last kiss until her hips snapped up in blissful release and she felt as if she might collapse from the overpowering jolt that raced through her body. She was only aware in the vaguest sense of being laid down and lavished with more kisses, dizzied from the same soft feelings of love she felt whenever they had a moment to steal away from the world. The pleasure crested over her, dragging Catra into sweet, insensate oblivion.

* * *

When she started to take in the world again, Catra was wrapped up in one of the warm Bright Moon blankets scattered around their guest quarters, with her head resting on Adora’s thigh as the princess stroked her hair. Her robe didn’t exactly fit at the moment, still transformed as she was, but it was hardly a bad view. Adora smiled down at her. “So good you passed out, huh? Maybe we should do this more often.”

“I’m certainly not going to argue. But can I get my Adora back now? I need to tell her what a stupid risk she just took.”

Adora shaped a rune in brilliant gold that dissolved into countless starbursts. “Right, magic. This place and its damned magic.”

Catra shut her eyes to block out the light that surrounded Adora. When she looked again, her princess was back to normal, slender with her dusty blonde hair and sweet smile. “How are you feeling?” Adora asked. How like her to think of that before anything else. It was endearing, her overarching concern for everyone else—and more than a little maddening, for anyone assigned to protect her.

“Sore, more than a little exhausted. The good kind. You really weren’t shy about working me over. And you? How did it feel to take the reins for once?”

She shuffled back so Adora could lay down as well, then curled up closer to her. “It’s more fun being in charge here than in a throne room, I’ll admit. I’m glad you suggested it.” Adora kissed the tip of her nose. “Good girl.”

A faint bloom of warmth at the praise made Catra grin sleepily.


	5. Chapter 5

“All right, I’ve made a few modifications to the course since yesterday. Let’s see how well you can maintain your concentration with more of a mental challenge.”

Glimmer leaned against the railing of the observation deck and watched as Adora stepped past her father and up to the course he’d put together in the training yard. Her betrothed unsheathed the Protector’s Sword—now _her_ sword—and slid her palm over the flat of the blade. It glowed in the wake of her touch, and once it was a brilliant white the brightness overtook her as well, leaving her silhouette expanding until the light faded. Glimmer rolled her lower lip between her teeth as the magic rippled out and washed over her. Adora had made great strides in harnessing her magic in the past month now that she had the proper focus for it, and Glimmer had seen her transform to train so many times that it was almost mundane.

Adora brushed some hair from her face, making the muscles in her arm flex. Almost.

She took off onto the course, enchanted to loop back on itself so they didn’t need the whole training yard, leaping here and there to avoid the lightning runes dotting the ground. Glimmer marked that as a success on her paper. This part was simple for her now, the only real challenge having been figuring out how strong she actually was. After overshooting the mark several times and leaving the ground dented where she’d landed, Adora had figured out how to moderate herself.

One of the puzzles was the next leg of the course. The simplest one, testing Adora’s ability to stay transformed while focusing on something else. She shoved her sword into the ground to free her hands for fiddling with the discs, trying to move them in a certain order from one peg to another to unlock the door in front of her, when a pair of shimmering magical constructs coalesced and began to advance on her. Adora glanced back at the noise of their shuffling, then cursed loudly enough for Glimmer to hear. She ripped her sword from the ground and charged one of the constructs, skewering it before swinging the sword with enough force that the first construct slid off and crashed into the first. Adora rushed back to the table as the discs began rearranging themselves in the absence of anyone controlling them, trying to finish the puzzle as more constructs started to form.

Glimmer swiped her quill across the paper again when the door disappeared, and the straight line of ink gradually became numbers detailing the time it took Adora to solve the puzzle. Better than the last time she’d tackled that particular segment, and she hadn’t dropped her transformation this time, either.

She let her gaze flit from the next section, a simple obstacle course that Adora never had trouble with, and looked around the rest of the training yard. Glimmer wondered, with only mild apprehension, where Catra was. She typically watched Adora’s practice, or at least lurked somewhere nearby, ever ready to sidle up to her princess and try to steal her away, as if having her all to herself at night wasn’t enough. It galled Glimmer to have to compete with anyone for her betrothed’s time, to have to try and surmount a preexisting relationship while making her own. She’d gone to Grayskull to secure an alliance, not a rival.

What galled her more was that Catra was winning. Slightly. Adora usually spent her days with Glimmer, exploring the capital or poring over books in the library together to research her particular brand of magic, but Catra had her at night. Doing whatever they normally did at night, which Glimmer preferred not to speculate on, even if she ended up doing so. More than once. But now she was left wondering if Catra was scheming to launch the next salvo in their back and forth of practical jokes. They’d needed _some_ kind of levity before they started clawing at one another. Levitating Catra into the fountain while she was napping would be hard to top, but turning Glimmer’s bedroom into an aviary by sprinkling bird seed all over the place had required a strong response.

Adora moved onto the next part of the course, and Glimmer went to mark down her time, but her quill suddenly felt a good deal fuzzier than she remembered. She looked down, where there was a dark, furry tail in her hand instead of—

“ _Hey, princess_.”

Glimmer threw her free hand back toward the voice before she could register it as Catra’s, though even then she was far too close for comfort. She whipped around to see Adora’s guard right behind her, quill in hand, having snuck up in her moment of distraction. Catra’s smirk quickly stretched to show the tips of her fangs. “Want to tell me why my boots were hidden on top of a pillar in the throne room this morning?”

“I guess you don’t keep track of your things very well,” Glimmer said dismissively.

Catra poked once at the hollow of Glimmer’s throat and closed what little distance remained between them. The sharp outline of her cheeks was visible through her fur from so close, and the daylight shone dangerously in her mismatched eyes. “Don’t keep me from doing my job.”

“Right now you’re keeping me from doing _mine_ ,” Glimmer bit back. She thumbed at the soft fur of Catra’s tail, still in her hand, and tightened her grip. Catra winced and swiped reflexively at her, trying to free herself, but she only hit a hastily fashioned ward. One claw did manage to get through and left a cut on Glimmer’s thumb, which made her hand tense further.

Catra yowled and flailed in response, forcing Glimmer back until she was near a gap in the observation deck railing. “All right, all right—!”

But releasing Catra’s tail didn’t stop her right away. Before she could realize that Glimmer wasn’t holding onto her anymore, Catra pressed forward again, colliding with Glimmer and sending them both off the deck to the ground below.

It wasn’t a long fall. The impact wouldn’t even have knocked the wind out of her but for the sudden crush of Catra’s body weight on her torso. Glimmer hacked out a groaning breath and shoved Catra to one side with considerable effort—she was surprisingly solid under her gambeson—only to get a reactive backlash across her forearm. Her skin burned from the cut opening as she whipped her hand out in response. She hit _something_ furry, which was the best she could hope for until she stopped seeing stars, before rolling on her side and fastening one hand over her sore stomach. Glimmer forced herself to her feet, still only able to breathe in short, wheezing gasps. She turned at the obstacle course, where Adora had stopped in the middle of a segment to look at them. There was a brief flash of light wreathing her that left a significantly more lissome Adora in the path of a spinning ball, a simple hazard to avoid—had she been paying attention. It crashed into her cheek and knocked her from the platform she was standing on. She landed on one of the lightning runes dotted over the course and gave a shout as the shock ran through her body. The magical obstacles flickered out of existence, leaving her in the middle of an empty stretch of dirt.

Glimmer hurried toward Adora as fast as her unsteady legs would carry her, and out of the side of her vision she saw Catra was doing the same. Adora was coughing out some dust when they reached her side, sitting up and reaching about for her sword that had landed mercifully away from her. Catra picked it up and offered it to her. “What are you _doing_?” Adora asked as she stood. A bright purple bruise was forming on her cheek, and she winced when she touched two fingers to it.

“She knocked us off the platform—”

“Because you grabbed my tail!”

“You put it in my hand!”

“Stop it!” Adora said, raising her voice half to shouting. There was a disquieting pulse of magical energy, rippling out so far that Micah began to approach them, and the sickly web of red lines that had surfaced on Adora’s skin in Grayskull threatened to shimmer into prominence. She pinched the bridge of her nose and took a deep breath, mumbling out a spell she’d been taught to soothe herself and head off any inadvertent transformations. Glimmer and Catra still stayed on edge until the magic buffeting them had receded. “What am I going to do with you two…”

Catra opened her mouth to say something, but it seemed Adora wasn’t done. Worse yet, Glimmer was the one she rounded on. “I—I refuse to believe that this is as decorous as you can be. And you have to know by now that responding to Catra’s teasing only encourages her.”

Glimmer’s face burned. She thought that they had edged past _teasing_ around the point where Catra had hidden Glimmer’s staff in the kitchens, but she knew that arguing the point would only make her seem petulant. She ardently refused to look sidelong at the smirk she knew Catra was given her. “I suppose we got carried away,” Glimmer said.

“And you.”

Glimmer bit the inside of her cheek to stifle her grin as she healed the cuts on her thumb and arm. At least Catra was getting hers, too.

“I know this isn’t a vacation for you by any means,” Adora said. To Glimmer’s consternation, Adora’s voice grew gentler as she addressed her guard. Catra, however, still winced as if she were being properly upbraided. “I understand this isn’t what you wanted. You’ve made that perfectly clear. But Glimmer is going to be my wife, and your job of protecting me is going to extend to her, so can you _please_ figure out some way to get along? Or at least come to an agreement so you’re not at each other’s throats? I’ll go out of my mind from this before the magic does it to me—ugh.”

She clutched the side of her head and gritted her teeth, but shook off their attempts to help her. Adora straightened up and took a step back. “Please work something out. Please. I need to lie down, my head is killing me.”

Adora stalked off toward Micah, who led her back into the castle. Glimmer sighed and looked at Catra, who matched her gaze for an instant before they both broke away. She knew Adora was right on some level, this brinksmanship would kill one of them sooner or later, and she couldn’t very well live in Grayskull with this hanging over her head.

Finally, she forced herself to look at Catra again. “I can have some food brought up to my room,” she said.

“That’s fine, I guess.” Catra glanced up at the castle’s south spire, then took a step closer to Glimmer and held onto her forearm. It was a very light touch, with the shorter, smoother fur around her hand giving over to the closest thing she had to bare skin. The tips of her retracted claws pressed without pain at Glimmer. Now that they weren’t swatting at one another, she felt remarkably warm.

“Um…”

“I thought you were going to do your little vanishing act,” Catra said. A moment stretched out, then another, before she started to tug her hand away. “It seemed quicker than walking up there. And there might be a bucket of something on top of your door that I need to take down before you open it.”

Glimmer pursed her lips. Still, it seemed like progress. She offered her arm and Catra took it again. “I’ve been told this feels a bit uncomfortable the first time. Cold. And like something snapping against your skin.”

Catra nodded and stepped closer to her again as Glimmer pulled at the magic around her. Maybe, _maybe_ she could salvage something from this.

⁂

There was no way to salvage anything from this.

Glimmer sprawled across her sofa, a book balanced on her stomach, as she read the same line for the fourth or fifth time. She’d lost track. Even though the atmosphere was—almost—ideal for getting some reading done.

She craned her neck and looked across her bedroom, where Catra was curled up on a large, comfortable chair she had moved to sit in the path of a bar of sunlight filtering in through the window. The end of her tail hung off the edge, flicking idly. At a glance, she would have appeared asleep, if not for the way she cracked one eye every now and then to look at the clepsydra nearby. Counting down the time before she could reasonably tell Adora that they spent the afternoon together without trying to kill each other.

Though how loosely Adora would have to interpret _together_ to count this was considerable. They’d eaten at the same table, silently, and then retired to opposite ends of Glimmer’s room, also silently. She wished she hadn’t given Bow leave to return to his family home for the time being. The conversation might have been forced, but he would have at least known how to try. Glimmer _wanted_ to say something, but nothing came to mind. Catra made no secret of her distaste for magic, removing most topics for a mage. Their only point of commonality was Adora, and that was too fraught a subject to consider. So she sat there, at an impasse, mentally fretting about each passing moment making it more awkward to start even if she did come up with something to talk about.

As if to grant some small reprieve, the crystal set above the door glowed, indicating that there was someone in the hallway. Sure enough, there was a knock a moment later. “Thank goodness,” Glimmer said under her breath as she rolled off the sofa and went to the door. Catra opened her eyes and watched, still motionless and impassive.

One of the palace guards was waiting for Glimmer with a bundle under one arm. “A delivery from the enchanters’ guild, Your Highness,” she said, and offered Glimmer the bundle, a roll of rough-hewn leather about as long as her hand and forearm together.

“What would they—oh! Thank you.”

The guard looked over Glimmer’s shoulder at her guest, but said nothing and departed after a quick bow. Catra deigned to show some mild interest as Glimmer shut the door and brought the delivery to her table, then arched one eyebrow when Glimmer beckoned her over. This could very well help her make some progress. Maybe. “I think you’ll want to see these.”

“Is it something that was going to fall on me or jump at me, or…?”

“No, I didn’t have anything else planned.” That wasn’t entirely true, but it seemed she wouldn’t have the chance to use any of her more elaborate ideas. Glimmer undid the ties holding the bundle together and let it fall open as Catra approached the table, revealing a twinned pair of baselards in freshly oiled leather sheaths. Catra’s tail flicked in curiosity as Glimmer unsheathed one dagger and rested the flat of the blade on one finger. The crest of Grayskull had been inscribed on the flat in black jasper to make it stand out against the silver surface, while the single fuller was engraved with the miniscule runes that fueled the dagger’s enchantments. Rather than a crossguard, it transitioned smoothly from the textured hilt to a ricasso, leaving enough room for the wielder to edge their first finger up from the hilt if they needed greater control. “We did sort of take your sword away. I thought you might like something else, so I had these made from some of our sidereal iron.”

Exceedingly aware that she was handing a weapon to someone who would just as soon have her dead while in a room with no witnesses, Glimmer offered Catra the dagger. She took it slowly and turned it over in her hand, running one claw over the runes while her thumb brushed at the hilt texture. After a moment she leveled the edge over a patch of fur on her forearm. The shortest bits of fur were left on the blade as she drew it across, cutting through them as if they weren’t even there. Satisfied with the sharpness, Catra set it on the back of her finger to find the balance. “We can’t replicate the kinds of enchantments the Protector’s Sword has, but I had them outfit these with the usual spells. They don’t need sharpening, the silver leaf doesn’t tarnish, you shouldn’t lose your grip since the hilt texture is charmed to improve the hold, so there’s no need for a pommel, and—here, I’ll show you.”

Catra passed it back to her, and Glimmer took the second dagger from its sheath so she could crash the ends of the hilts together. The impact fused the two weapons with a burst of magic so that the blades threatened on either end, while a handhold remained in the middle. Catra’s lips parted as she took it again. “You can separate them by putting your hands on either side of the median here and pulling one end.”

She followed Glimmer’s directions and the blades parted once more with a ripple of magic. Catra took a step back so she could swipe through empty air, holding one normally and the other in a reverse grip. Glimmer moved away to watch. Judging by the way Catra was able to whirl about at such speed she needed to use her tail for counterbalance, her guess was right. The unusually wide gladius profile of the Protector’s Sword and the training models based on it had limited Catra’s maneuverability and agility. With something lighter, narrower, designed for slashing and stabbing rather than cleaving, she was able to move and attack to her full potential. And what a potential it was, Glimmer thought as she watched Catra arch her back in the middle of a thrust. Her mouth was very dry, suddenly.

One of the blades missed a Salinean vase by such a small margin that Glimmer yelped. Catra slowed to a stop and returned to the table so she could sheathe the blades and try on the belt that held them. It hung well on her hips, slightly akilter to match the way she held her weight. “You really just had these made for me? I’m not going to be stuck paying for them? Or they won’t…I don’t know, turn to dust if I actually try to hit something?”

“They’re a gift, Captain. The proper response would be _thank you, Your Highness_ ,” Glimmer said dryly. It wasn’t as if they had an unlimited store of sidereal iron, and having them forged and enchanted had set her stipend back two months or so. A little more appreciation wouldn’t have been unwelcome. But…she was starting to understand that Catra’s feelings didn’t translate all that well to her words. “And they’re as functional as any weapon a guard would have. If you like, let’s go test that. We’re overdue for a rematch anyway.”

“Are you that eager to lose again?”

Catra cocked her head to one side, smirking as she thumbed the hilt of one of her new daggers. A hint of fang poked against her lower lip. Oh, how Glimmer wanted to do something about that grin, so infuriatingly self-assured. _Friendly_ sparring was fine, wasn’t it? She took her staff from its dais and motioned for Catra to follow her.

Rather than crowd up against the obstacle course sitting dormant in the yard, Glimmer led Catra to one of the enclosed training rooms halfway up the southern spire. It was a simple, bare space, with its surfaces enchanted to be soft enough to absorb impacts and not let errant attacks bounce all over. Glimmer tapped the jeweled end of her staff against the floor a few times as they took opposing positions near the middle of the room. “There’s a spell in here that dulls blade edges, so don’t hold back.”

“Did you think I was going to?” Catra asked, sliding one dagger from its sheath. She tapped the edge with her palm to confirm that there was indeed a protective magical layer turning the whole length dull, then drew the other. Her stance changed, turning to one side and shifting her weight to ready herself for springing forward. The tension that kept crackling between them was practically singing now.

“No, not really.”

There was a moment not unlike hovering in the air before falling when Glimmer’s stomach flipped, when she wondered if she had ventured out of her depth by challenging a trained soldier. Catra had already taken her to task once, after all.

But now she had new weapons to wrap her head around, Glimmer had her staff, and the Moonstone was nearby, its energy rippling through the air all throughout the palace. Glimmer rather liked her chances. “We can’t exactly go to first blood…until one of us yields, then?” she asked.

“Fine. Until you yield.”

Glimmer didn’t rise to her taunt and instead concentrated on sending a surge of magic into her staff. The sapphire at the end glowed violet and shot a bolt of energy that sizzled into the ground where Catra had been standing an instant earlier, before leaping into the air. She hadn’t meant for it to land, and would have been a bit disappointed if such an obvious attack had hit its mark. Glimmer brought her staff up and across her body as Catra came down on her, arms jangling from the impact. The tip of one dagger poked perilously at her collarbone through her robe, dulled but still very capable of harm, before Catra planted her feet on Glimmer’s hips. She sprang back using Glimmer as a launching platform and twisted through the air. It was…surprisingly graceful, Glimmer thought. But she had no time to admire the view.

She judged Catra’s most likely landing point and teleported to intercept her. Glimmer swung her staff and caught the backs of Catra’s legs with such force that the shock rattled up to her shoulders. Her graceful landing became a heavy _thud_ onto her back, and Glimmer pressed her advantage by teleporting halfway to the ceiling to add more force to a downward strike. Her staff struck Catra’s daggers, thrown up at the last moment to parry, but it still pressed down to her collarbone. Catra kicked out, rotating her body over and around the staff until she was able to scramble away.

Though _away_ was a very malleable idea when Glimmer could simply teleport closer.

Catra slammed the ends of her daggers together to change tack, but Glimmer was already moving. She threw her staff high in the air and wreathed her hand in magical energy before she leapt and teleported behind Catra, throwing her momentum into a punch to the back of Catra’s knee before she teleported again and righted herself.

She caught her staff on its descent as Catra went down to one knee, her daggers forgotten on the floor beside her as she clutched her thigh with a snarl. The magic would make her leg numb for a few minutes, but without any lasting damage. Just enough discomfort to send a message. Now it was Glimmer’s turn to put on her best smirk as she steadied her breathing and settled the end of her staff beneath Catra’s chin to pitch her head up. “Oh…this feels familiar.” She took some twisted delight in the way Catra’s fangs were now fully bared, at having done that to her. “Yield, or I’ll numb the rest—”

Catra wasn’t ready to yield. She threw herself forward on her good leg and grabbed Glimmer around the waist, batting her staff away as she pulled her to the floor. Glimmer tried to throw her off when she got over the shock of landing on her back, but Catra couldn’t be dislodged so easily. She hadn’t yet drawn her claws, which seemed like the smallest of blessings now as Catra clutched Glimmer’s wrists and shoved them to the floor, keeping her from teleporting away.

But Glimmer didn’t need to teleport away. She pulled them both into the air and took advantage of Catra’s shock to twist and reverse their positions as they fell back down. Glimmer channeled more magic into her hands to pin Catra’s wrists, then scrambled to plant her legs over Catra’s thighs and fix her in place. She put up an impressive struggle, and Glimmer had to call on a staggering amount of magic to channel the strength necessary to keep her on the floor. “I said _yield_ ,” Glimmer muttered in between heavy, labored breaths. Catra was winded as well, her chest rising and falling in a harsh rhythm beneath Glimmer. They were so close now that a lock of Glimmer’s hair that had fallen out of place rested in a patch of fur on Catra’s cheek.

_“Make me.”_

She wasn’t sure who moved first. She didn’t know if it mattered, really. All Glimmer knew was that one moment they were glowering at each other, struggling for breath, and then Catra’s lips were on hers. A jolt ran down Glimmer’s spine as she melted into the kiss, spreading an intoxicating, aching heat through her body than soothed the tension and left her sinking onto Catra. It wasn’t gentle, or even sweet—both of them were furiously trying to claim one another and find some kind of dominant position. Catra flitted her tongue at Glimmer, who parted her lips to let her in, unable to resist a soft moan at the surge of warmth. Without the concentration needed to maintain her magic, Catra wriggled her hands out of Glimmer’s grasp and planted one firmly on her hip, while the other fastened onto Glimmer’s back. The merest hint of claws poked at her through her robe.

Catra’s grip on her suddenly tightened before they rolled across the floor and found their positions reversed. Glimmer ran her hands into Catra’s hair as they broke away to breathe, only for Catra to descend on her throat, nipping and tugging at her skin as Glimmer held her there. She was dizzy, breathless, pitching her head back to give Catra better access, still too shocked to process anything. Glimmer groped blindly until she found Catra’s thigh and pulled it between her legs, gasping when she rocked her hips and another hard jolt rushed through her. Catra growled and snapped her hips in turn, tail wrapping around one of Glimmer’s legs. With some remaining scrap of cogency, Glimmer stilled in confusion as she tried to make sense of whatever was pressing at her stomach, stiffly grinding in time with Catra’s movements—

“Ah—?”

Catra looked up from making a mess of her neck, then started and scrambled away, wide-eyed from shock and looking anywhere but at Glimmer. “You, I…uh—go,” she mumbled, tripping over her words as she stood. Her face was flushed so red that it showed through her fur, darkening her cheeks and neck. Glimmer sat up, still out of breath and unable to string together any kind of protest, in time to see Catra hurry out of the room, pausing only to pick up her still-joined daggers before she broke into a run. Suddenly Glimmer was alone, heart still pounding in her chest, warmth still licking at her.

Slowly, she got to her feet and retrieved her staff, wobbling on unsteady legs before teleporting back to her bedroom. Glimmer lingered there only long enough to grab a pillow from her bed before pulling in as much magic as she could without hurting herself and vanishing again. Her teleportation put her on a cliff overlooking the capital, far enough away from anything that she didn’t have to worry about being bothered. It was still exhausting, but the privacy was well worth the effort. Glimmer put the pillow over her mouth and screamed—whether out of frustration, panic, confusion, or simply being cut off in the middle of things, she didn’t know. Everything seemed worth yelling about at the moment.

When her throat began to hurt, Glimmer fell silent and touched gingerly at her neck, where there were a few sore spots on her skin from Catra’s attentions. She sat near the cliff’s edge, looking out at the capital and the Moonstone shining above it as the sun began to set, and tried to make sense of this.

It was just…their nerves getting confused in the rush of the fighting, Glimmer told herself. That was it. That _had_ to be it, because the alternative—wanting to get Catra alone in a situation where they weren’t competing over someone else, wanting to wipe that stupid smirk off her lips by kissing them, _wanting_ her to continue—couldn’t be. After all, that would mean she wasn’t simply jockeying with Catra for Adora’s attention, but trying to get Catra’s attention as well. And that was nonsense, Glimmer thought with a scoff. Why would she want the attention of a lithe, devoted, gorgeous…

“Oh, damn it all.”


	6. Chapter 6

Adora took another sip of her tea and leaned back in her chair, trying to will away the ache pounding through her head. She’d been taught any number of techniques for dealing with it over the past month, each as ineffective as the last. Her first thought was that it had been the strain of unleashing so much magic, but the onset of the pains didn’t correspond to her training sessions. Just as often they would start when she was doing nothing in particular as her regular self.

She narrowed her eyes as she looked at the Protector’s Sword, laying across the table in its scabbard. “I blame you.”

But it couldn’t be her proximity to the sword either, she knew. She’d been near it every day for years when Catra carried it—Adora almost wished that was the cause, if only to have an explanation.

Her headache did subside eventually, or at least dulled enough that she wasn’t in pain. There was still a pressure at the back of her head, just enough to remind her it was there. She drained the rest of her chamomile tea, folded her arms over her chest, and turned to the window. Barely sunset. Going to sleep now would leave her up far too early the next morning. Still, she was exhausted. And sleeping seemed a better option than fretting over whether Catra and Glimmer had killed each other. It had been a while since she’d heard anything from Glimmer’s quarters next door—perhaps they had gone somewhere else. No one had come by with ill tidings, so Adora forced herself to assume they were getting along, wherever they were.

Adora’s eyes flitted closed. The chairs in Bright Moon were so much more comfortable than the ones in Grayskull. Maybe they would let her take a few back with her when she returned. Adora tried to rouse herself, but the position she’d gotten into was too nice. Closing her eyes for a few minutes would be fine. Just a few minutes…

The sky was a warm haze of ambers and purples when Adora started awake, breathing heavily as she tried to shake off the remnants of her dream: shadows like billowing black smoke wrapping, tendril-like, around her arms and legs, squeezing tight and pulling her down until she struggled to draw breath. Adora touched her throat briefly, then brought her hand up to her cheek where she’d been struck earlier. The bruise was gone, magicked away by one of the palace healers, but a fleeting sensitivity remained.

Everything began to settle in her mind, and it was only then that Adora noticed a harsh cadence of breath from one of the other rooms. She shot to her feet and reached for the dirk at her waist before rushing through one of the high archways that opened into the bedroom. Her fingers relaxed and slid from the dirk’s hilt. Now she felt silly, getting up in arms over Catra. She was leaning over a washbasin, unmoving but for the way her tail flicked to and fro and the uneven rise and fall of her chest.

“When did you get back?” Adora asked, looking as subtly as she could for any blood or scratch marks. There was nothing obvious, which was good. She took a step closer. “Although I’m sure it would help if I knew what time it was now, I think I nodded off…Catra?”

She looked over her shoulder, and her tail lifted slightly. “Hey, Adora.”

Catra splashed a handful of water on her face and held her head over the washbasin, letting the droplets patter back down. “That must be ice-cold by now,” Adora said, coming close enough to put a hand on Catra’s shoulder. She shrugged as her tail wound reflexively around Adora’s leg. “You’re shaking.”

“Like you said, the water’s cold.”

Even for Catra, she was being awfully taciturn. Adora pressed to her back and slipped her arms around Catra’s waist. She relaxed, though not as much as Adora expected. Better to do this quickly. “Did everything go all right? You didn’t come to blows again, did you?”

“Hmm? No, it was fine. She was…tolerable.”

“Isn’t that high praise,” Adora said wryly. She turned Catra around and took a towel from beside the washbasin to pat her face dry. Catra submitted to it without complaint, staunchly refusing to meet Adora’s gaze no matter how many times Adora tried to catch it. She frowned. Maybe the reality of their situation was finally starting to hit her. Not that Adora had expected her to be thrilled about this betrothal, but she hadn’t expected Catra’s response to be so…numb. She patted Catra’s hand dry and saw a pair of blades on her belt. The design befitted daggers, but their length was more like short swords. “Those are new.”

Catra went to touch the hilt of one, then drew her hand away. “Gift,” she said simply, then added after a moment, “from your…you know.”

“From Glimmer? She gave you a gift?”

“Said she felt bad about taking my sword.”

It was a bit odd as far as peace offerings went, but if it worked, Adora wasn’t going to question it too closely. “Well, as long as you’ve made up, I suppose.”

“We made ou—up, we made up, yes,” Catra said, itching at her forearms. She brushed by Adora and smoothed back some loose hair. “If there’s nothing else Your Majesty needs, I was hoping to turn in early. I’m exhausted.”

Adora raised an eyebrow at being addressed so formally, but shook her head. “No, nothing else. I think I’ll join you, I didn’t get any rest earlier.”

They wordlessly prepared for bed, with Adora sneaking sidelong looks at Catra all the while. She thought of simply asking if there was anything bothering Catra, but there was a rather obvious answer to that, one Adora had no way of addressing. All she could think to do as she darkened the windows to block out the sunset was to try and cheer her up. Remind her that she was still loved.

But when she went to climb into bed, Adora saw that Catra had curled up at the opposite end, turned away and buried under the blankets. Maybe she needed some distance, then. A bit of space to breathe and make her peace with everything. Adora shuffled under the bedsheets and stared up at the stars painted on the ceiling. The bed was large enough that she might have been alone, and more than once she found herself feeling around for a bedmate who was out of reach.

“This is happening, isn’t it? You and her?”

Adora turned toward Catra’s voice, so soft that it barely registered. She hadn’t moved, and was now no more than a vague outline in what little light came through the now-smoked glass. “Yes,” Adora said. The assuagements swirling in her head never made it past her lips.

“Right.”

She said nothing more. Adora rolled onto her back again and counted the stars above her until she was too tired to continue.

⁂

The next week was mercifully peaceful, though only because Catra managed to contrive some excuse to slip away whenever Glimmer was with Adora. She had seen her guard disappear more times in the past few days than in the past sixteen years, going off to train with her new weapons or wandering around the capital. The matter of the betrothal remained undiscussed any further, lingering in the air between them like a miasma whenever they were together, though at least Catra was no longer hiding at the other end of the bed at night.

But at the moment, Adora wasn’t in a hurry to go back to her quarters. Instead she was lying out on the balcony connected to Glimmer’s apartments, looking at the sky to see the way her betrothed was manipulating the stars. Small pinpricks of light resolved into the shapes of people and animals, dancing and whirling across an infinite stage. Adora looked away from the show and at Glimmer, sitting at her side, eyes glowing a soft violet as she stared skyward. One hand flicked in time with the movements of the dance above them, while the other rested between them on the blanket they had set out. Adora curled her little finger around Glimmer’s, and the stars seemed to brighten.

When the illusion faded and all the stars returned to their proper places, Glimmer fell back onto the blanket, breathing deeply from the exertion. Her eyes were back to normal when she looked at Adora with a faint grin and laced their fingers together. “I think that was the way the book described it,” Glimmer said in satisfaction. “What did you think?”

“Beautiful,” Adora said quietly.

Glimmer turned on her side and looked very plainly at Adora’s lips, then brought her free hand up to stroke Adora’s cheek. “I had the very same thought.” One finger trailed to the corner of her mouth. “May I kiss you, princess?”

“You may…”

She closed most of the distance between them, leaving Adora to meet her lips, which she was only too glad to do. It was chaste at first, until Glimmer leaned closer and opened her mouth ever so slightly. Adora matched her to deepen the kiss, and an excited rush easily washed away the faint twinge of guilt she felt at enjoying this.

Glimmer shifted closer, propping herself up on one elbow so she was above Adora and they wouldn’t have to crane their necks, and let her tongue flit at Adora’s lips once before they eased apart. Both of them were a little breathless as they grinned like fools and eased back onto the blanket. Glimmer’s smile stretched across fully half of her face, Adora saw, from one dimple to another. She could spend a long time studying all the details. Glimmer kissed her quickly once more. “I’m glad I accepted your invitation,” Adora said.

“Not half as glad as me, I think…shall I walk you back to your rooms? I saw how ardently you were training today, I’m surprised you’re even still awake.”

Glimmer toyed with a bit of Adora’s robe, as if to preserve _some_ kind of contact between them. It was true, she had capitalized on a day without any headaches and perhaps overtaxed herself. At least she could look forward to sinking into a warm, almost impossibly plush bed and at the end of it. “That’s not going to last,” Adora said with a chuckle. “I’ll get up in a moment.”

One moment stretched to two to five to ten. The only move Adora made was to roll onto her side, where she could rest her lips against the hollow of Glimmer’s throat. If Glimmer was opposed to her staying the night—and Adora somehow doubted that she was—she said nothing as she draped one arm over Adora’s side and traced lazy circles with one finger. “Is it all right if I bring us over to the bed? Your back will thank you in the morning for not sleeping on stone,” Glimmer said, her voice winding delicately over Adora’s skin.

“Mmn.”

There was a brief flash of coldness that made her start, not altogether unlike the way she sometimes jerked when falling asleep, and then Adora was sinking into the soft warmth of Glimmer’s bed. She sighed and nuzzled her betrothed.

Adora didn’t intend to start a new routine, but it was easy to slip into the habit of alternating her nights between Glimmer’s quarters and her own. None of them saw fit to comment on the arrangement—the closest it came to that was Catra occasionally asking how she slept the night before. Perhaps owing to the way Catra preferred to spend their shared evenings—and occasionally the following mornings, if the mood struck them—she never pressed for details about how Adora and Glimmer passed their time together. Not that there would have been all that much to tell if she had; Glimmer seemed content to pepper Adora with kisses and cuddle up together to watch a crackling fire in the hearth near her bed.

Which was why the missive Adora received late one afternoon, inviting her up to a part of the palace’s central spire that she hadn’t explored, gave her pause. Still, it never occurred to her to decline. She looked through her clothes that had been packed and brought from Grayskull, but they were mostly functional, suitable for getting around and not much else. There was a gown made of red shimmersilk slashed with gold highlights down the sides and along the hem, a betrothal gift from one of the magic guilds, that would do. Carefully—it felt so delicate in her hands that Adora worried even rubbing it the wrong way might tear it—she slipped into the gown, adjusting the way it fell on her shoulders and smoothing out the front before tying the matching gold sash around her waist. The enchantments in the fabric slowly tightened it until the silhouette conformed to her body, and Adora stepped into a pair of slightly darker slippers before turning to the mirror nearby to see if she could carry it off.

It was a bit strange not to see her legs apart from a brief flash of skin between the hem and her ankles, but otherwise it seemed to work well enough. The way the gown hugged her body as opposed to the comfortable looseness of a doublet made her seem even taller than she already was, but there wasn’t much she could do about that. She was just tall. Adora turned around to try and see the rest, then frowned. Three buttons at the small of her back seemed to be the only part of the gown that wasn’t enchanted, and they hung at the most awkward possible spot to try and fasten on her own. She _could_ ask Catra to help her, but testing the unstable equilibrium the three of them had arrived at in such a way seemed…unwise. Adora would just have to do it herself.

Sooner said than done, she found as she struggled to both look over her shoulder to see what she was doing and maneuver her hands into position to do this. Getting the fine motions of her fingers right to work the buttons into their matching loops when she had to see everything backward wasn’t a skill she had, Adora quickly realized. She grumbled in frustration as she turned her head the other way to see if it would offer a better perspective, but her hands were still blocking her from seeing most of what she was doing, no matter how she twisted and turned. “Will she really care about what I’m wearing that much…?”

“What are you doing, you fool?”

Adora froze and saw Catra in the mirror, leaning against the door and good-naturedly rolling her eyes. “Neither of us ever had too many dresses, but I don’t think you’re supposed to do that part yourself,” she said as she walked over. Adora’s face burned a little. “Stop pulling yourself into knots, I’ll do it. Turn around.”

Once she had capitalized on the gown’s open back by running her fingers from Adora’s nape to the buttons, she deftly worked them into their loops. Wordlessly, Catra went about fixing the gown, smoothing out the places that had bunched up with Adora’s vain efforts so it sat properly against her skin. “Don’t you look pretty,” she said, pressing a kiss to the crook of Adora’s shoulder as she looked her charge over in the mirror.

“Thank you. Do you…have something to occupy yourself with tonight?” Adora asked.

Catra eased back with another parting kiss to Adora’s throat. “It’s my job to worry about you, not the other way around. I’ll find something.”

There was a knock on the door from the other room, and Catra stepped away, tail curling up against her leg as she retreated to the balcony. Adora fixed a few locks of hair than had fallen out of place and then went to open the door. She was first relieved, and then appreciative, when she saw that Glimmer had also elected to wear something nicer than her day to day fare—a violet gown a shade or two darker than her eyes, framed by her favored cape that imitated faint, twinkling starlight against a sable field. “Goodness,” Glimmer said, unable to resist letting her gaze drift up and down. “This must be why you favor those doublets, no one around you would get anything done otherwise.”

“Your Highness is quite the accomplished flatterer.”

“No flattery needed…shall we?” Glimmer asked as she offered her arm. Adora took it and allowed herself to be led down the hall, away from the apartments and over the covered walkway that connected the south spire to the central structure of the palace. “You really do look lovely, though.”

Adora beamed and lightly touched Glimmer’s arm with her free hand.

Glimmer brought her up another winding staircase that took them to what must have been the very top of the palace, where there was a single door leading outside—or, it looked like a door. Without a knob or handle to open it, there wasn’t much in the way of functionality that Adora could see until Glimmer pressed her hand to the surface. Her fingers glowed softly and the door swung open under its own power, allowing them to step outside.

Had Adora not just seen that night had fallen when they were coming from the southern spire, she could have sworn it was midday. The Moonstone hovered at the far end of a narrow walkway, giving off so much energy that Adora could actually feel it washing over her, like a gentle embrace from every angle. Glimmer, too, was practically radiant from being so close to the source of her magic. She guided Adora closer, where a basket full of food was set on a blanket so close to the Moonstone that they could reach out and—

“You can touch it, if you like.”

_“Really?”_

Adora didn’t wait for her to qualify her statement and fixed her palm to the Moonstone. Her whole body tingled pleasantly, as if she’d sunk into a hot bath, and all the soreness from the day’s earlier training seemed to slough off of her. She acclimated to the frisson after a moment so it was possible to focus on something else—like Glimmer smiling at her glee. “It’s a full moon tonight, so it’s at its most powerful. Even people without a specific connection to the Moonstone can feel it if they’re close enough.”

Glimmer touched it as well, and a faint glow appeared around her, shining for a moment before dimming but not quite disappearing. She shivered and sighed before turning back to Adora. “Shall we eat? I tried to put together a bit of everything.”

“In that little basket?”

She really should have known better at this point, but Glimmer picked up the basket and put half her arm in to show that it was bigger within than without. “Oh. Right. Magic.”

Glimmer did, in fact, have a bit of everything. Bread so fresh it tore easily in her hands, a full-bodied red wine, ham and leek pottage, capon infused with a sweet lemon and orange mixture, glacé fruit…and Adora could only sit there through most of it, sipping her wine to soothe her dry throat as she studied the effect the Moonstone had on her betrothed. The shimmering outline around Glimmer began taking the shape of wings behind her, while the bright spots in her hair seemed to twinkle with energy. “Not hungry?” she asked with a glance down at Adora’s trencher. “I can find something else, if you’d prefer.”

“No! No, it’s all delicious, this is wonderful. I’m just…a bit distracted, that’s all. It’s hard not to look at you when you’re like this,” Adora admitted, feeling color well up in her cheeks.

“Ah.” Glimmer’s phantom wings brightened as she plucked a sugared blueberry from its bowl and shifted closer to Adora. She drew the cold berry over Adora’s lips, circling twice before popping it into her mouth. The sweetness burst on her tongue, and Adora let out a small satisfied sound that made her face flush redder. “Look as much as you like, then. If that’s _all_ you want to do.”

Glimmer’s fingers slipped away from Adora’s lips to cradle the back of her head, and it took no inducement beyond the slightest tug for her to lean forward and kiss her betrothed. When Adora put an arm around Glimmer to hold her in place, her hand passed through one of the wings and made her whole arm tingle. Not that she needed to be held in place. The crown princess melted against Adora, parting her lips and letting her tongue swipe out as she wrapped Adora in a tight embrace. Her heart thrummed in time with the magic radiating off Glimmer, and no sooner had they broken for air than Adora dove back in, grip tightening on Glimmer’s cape.

There was a slight downward tug on her hair, and Adora obligingly pitched her head back to let Glimmer roam up and down her neck, nipping ever so gently at the delicate flesh around the hollow of her throat. “Adora,” she whispered, her voice humming through Adora’s skin and making her shiver.

“Mm?”

“Would you like to go back to my room?”

Her stomach flipped, though not unpleasantly. Their nights together had all been chaste thus far, but it was obvious what they’d been building to. The sudden, insistent pressure building between her legs answered for her. “Yes…yes, Glimmer,” Adora said.

Rather than walk them all the way back, Glimmer kissed Adora once more as they vanished and reappeared in Glimmer’s apartments, far enough above the bed to fall into the soft, warm sheets. Adora laughed a little at the _whump_ she made on impact and reached back to undo the fastenings on her gown, only to find they were already loose. Glimmer grinned and waggled her fingers, bright with magic at the ends. “I don’t mean to sound vain, but it’s amazing what I can do when my runestone is at its full power,” she said.

“Is that so?”

Glimmer’s hands planted on Adora’s cheeks, but the feeling of being held extended all over her body, as if there were countless hands on her, exploring, taunting, teasing. She shook under the heady feeling. “Why don’t I show you?”

* * *

No sooner had Adora bit her lip and nodded than her gown was coming over her head and drifting to the floor nearby. Glimmer only had to flick her fingers to make the clasp on her cape come undone, before the rest of her outfit quickly followed. She descended on Adora again, and the soft glow of her outline slowly expanded to encompass Adora as well. Everywhere it touched as it grew seemed to sing with pleasure, and she was so unsteady by the time it completely enshrouded her that it took Glimmer pulling her into her lap to keep her upright. “The dress _is_ lovely,” Glimmer said, running her thumb over Adora’s collarbone, “but you look so much better without it.”

Adora tried to pay her a similar compliment, but her voice failed her as Glimmer’s hand trailed down, pausing to outline the swell of one breast, then the other, before sliding along her stomach. She grinned as she felt at the firm tone there, almost groping at Adora before moving on, down to the narrow line of hair peeking out from between her legs. Adora shifted in Glimmer’s lap to offer her better access, and Glimmer in turn amplified her magic, making it feel as if Adora were being kissed and fondled all over as she slipped her hand along Adora’s sex. She fell against Glimmer, kissing at and panting against her neck, and managed to string together enough cogent thought to beg her, “Don’t…tease me…”

“No?” Glimmer glided two fingers between Adora’s folds, swirling through the obvious arousal there before circling her clit. “You seem to be enjoying it. Quite a bit, if I’m being honest. But I would hate to not give my betrothed what she wants.”

One finger eased into her, curling forward and rubbing gently until Adora’s nails were raking Glimmer’s back. The normally-isolated pleasure flared through her body, like a fire raging out of control, and it took her a moment to realize through the haze of her thoughts that she wasn’t the only one trembling. “Can you feel it?” Adora asked, slurring her words as she nuzzled her cheek into the crook of Glimmer’s shoulder. “What I’m feeling?”

“Mmhmm…”

Glimmer added another finger, rocking her hand back and forth so that the heel of her palm rubbed over Adora’s clit on her outstroke. She peppered kisses up the side of Glimmer’s throat until she could trail over to her lips and kiss her so hard that she nearly fell back onto the bed. Glimmer picked up her pace in answer, and Adora rocked her hips into her hand as best she could until the mounting pressure was too much to bear. Rather than let her finish so easily, Glimmer stopped moving, leaving Adora to tense for an interminable, unbearable moment before continuing with renewed vigor. Adora’s voice failed as pleasure crashed at her from all sides, held up only barely as her climax bounced back and forth between them.

* * *

They did collapse onto the bed at some point, in a moment of lapsed consciousness that Adora couldn’t recall. She was still twitching when Glimmer withdrew the magic tying them together. The faint glow around Glimmer was allowed to fade, leaving the room lit only by a pair of luminescent crystals on the nightstands that flanked the bed. “I should,” Adora began as Glimmer licked her fingers clean and waved her hand to dim the lights around them. “I can take care of you, too.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt it. But right now you couldn’t even stand up, anything more than sleeping seems a bit ambitious.” Glimmer eased Adora up to the pillows and nestled her in before planting a kiss on her cheek. “We’ll see how you feel in the morning.”

She wanted to protest, but her body refused to humor her attempts at reciprocation. Adora did eventually regain some strength, but only enough to wobble to the washroom and clean herself up before returning to bed. Glimmer’s arm settled over her, and Adora barely had time to enjoy the feeling before nodding off.

It was the same dream most nights, with only minor variations. There were always shadows, creeping around her despite there being nothing nearby to cast them, always wrapping themselves over her arms and legs until she was enfolded, and then dragging her no matter how she struggled. She gasped for breath and fought to kick her way out of the mire, but there was no way to measure her progress, if she was even making any. Adora could only lay there in the darkness, growing dizzy and light-headed, until the void in front of her began to separate into shapes and colors. It was fuzzy, tinted a faint gold, as if she were seeing sunlight through a pane of stained glass.

The floaty, vaguely unreal feeling of a dream collapsed as Adora studied her surroundings. Some kind of cavern, lit by torches, hastily dug out and reinforced by wooden beams. People were collapsed nearby, still clutching pickaxes and shovels. Some were moving. More weren’t. A sound like steel clanging against stone made everything shake, and Adora turned her head with no small effort toward the source of the clatter. The empty white eyes of Shadow Weaver’s mask stared back at Adora, and her hand seemed to reach through the barrier between them until it was so frighteningly close that Adora forced herself away, up through a long stretch of dark earth and stone before breaking out to open sky—

Adora awoke in a cold sweat, her whole body jerking this way and that as she sat up with an indistinct shout, ripping away the bedsheets on her as she did. She looked blearily around, trying to figure out where she was, before the sight of Glimmer’s bedroom began to make sense. The thin slice of sky visible from the balcony was smeared orange with the sunrise. Adora leaned back against the headboard with a sigh and looked down, only to realize that this was…not her body. Or it was, but she had never been able to transform without the Protector’s Sword nearby before. Had she done it in her sleep? As some kind of response to that all-too-real nightmare?

Glimmer stirred beside her, cracking one eye before paying more attention. “Did this dream just get much more interesting, or did you actually transform?”

“I—” Adora rubbed her throat, unused to the deeper voice she had when her magic was unbound— “I think I did? I had a terrible dream, but it wasn’t…ugh, why can’t I remember?”

She held her head in her hands, and without enough focus to maintain her stronger form, Adora’s magic flickered away. Suddenly she was her normal size once more, still straining to recall something, anything. Glimmer touched her shoulder. “It’ll fade soon enough.”

“No, I want to remember, it felt like something I need to know.”

But the more she tried to recall, the more the details slipped away, like water trickling through the gaps between her fingers. The only detail that lingered long enough for her to commit it to memory was a stretch of land she had seen for a moment at the end. Enough of a mountain range existed nearby that she could vaguely place the location as somewhere north of her capital. Adora turned to Glimmer. “Is there some kind of spell to see what’s happening far away?”

“There’s the scrying pool, but…what’s gotten into you?”

“Can we use it?”

Glimmer looked her up and down. “We might want to get dressed first.”

Adora found her gown on the floor and threw it on before hurrying over to her own rooms, where Catra had moved a chair to sit in the path of a morning sunbeam while she nursed a mug of warm milk. She perked up at Adora’s reappearance, then scrambled to follow her when she rushed through the sitting room to get to her wardrobe. “What’s the matter, why are you running around like this?” Catra asked as Adora pulled out something functional.

“You’d think I was crazy if I told you,” Adora said. She peeled the gown off again in favor of plain trousers and a doublet embroidered with her sigil.

Catra backed out of her way as Adora hurried over to the table where she’d left the Protector’s Sword and fastened the belt around her waist. “You seem a bit crazed as it is.”

“Adora?”

Glimmer poked her head into the back room, only for both her and Catra to look pointedly away from one another. Adora couldn’t deal with whatever sort of stalemate they had come to right now. The image of that spot in her country was getting less and less clear by the minute. “Good, you’re dressed. Can you take us down to this scrying thing? I need to see what’s going on in Grayskull.”

“We’re not supposed to use it for spying on other nations, but I guess my mother can’t be mad about it if she doesn’t know,” Glimmer said and offered her hand. Adora took it, while at the same time extending her free hand toward Catra, who clasped it in her own, before looking expectantly back at Glimmer. “It, um, doesn’t work with this many degrees of separation. I have to be touching everyone I’m trying to teleport.”

There was obvious reluctance in the gesture, but Glimmer did hold out her other hand, and Catra, just as reluctantly, took it. Magic flashed around them with a brief _pop_ as they teleported into a large chamber filled only with a shallow pool three times as wide across as Adora was tall when transformed. Glimmer shaped a rune and overlaid it on the surface, making the clear water within shimmer into a panoply of colors. “All right, think of the place you want to see and then touch the water. And try to be specific, I don’t know how long I can maintain this without someone finding out. It draws a lot of magic from the Moonstone.”

Adora fixed the location in her mind as best she could, a large stretch of farmland some ways north of Castle Grayskull, and touched the surface of the water. It didn’t ripple, but instead swirled and shifted its colors to a dreary swatch of browns and grays. An image began to form out of the morass, slowly sharpening until Adora could see the place from her dreams.

The doors on the far side of the room flew open and Queen Angella strode in, flanked by several guards. “Glimmer, what are you—you’re all here?”

Her anger melted into a wary confusion, and Catra sidled closer to Adora as Glimmer tried to smooth things over with the queen. “Mother! I was just about to call for you, but…then I didn’t. But I meant to!”

“You know very well the scrying pool is not to be used without permission,” she said. “What are you doing here so early in the morning?”

“Er, well, Adora had this dream, and, and, I think she can explain it better!”

The queen looked at Adora, for whom questions of protocol and permission were the furthest things from her mind. All she could focus on was what had become of the field she remembered. Where she should have seen wide swaths of grain and wheat, there was only freshly uprooted earth carried from a massive pit, swarming with hundreds of people either taking out wagonloads of stone and dirt or trudging down to repeat the process. Some of the workers collapsed as they walked, only to be ignored by the others passing them. “What happened here…”

“Is that where those old ruins were?” Catra asked, leaning over the water to get a better look.

Angella, too, studied the scene, momentarily distracted from their impetuousness. “Was Your Majesty starting some kind of earthworks project?”

“No, this—this was good farmland, I’d never have it ripped up and dug out.”

“ _You_ wouldn’t,” Catra said, and leveled an accusing finger toward one of the figures at the edge of the scene. “She would.”

Glimmer touched the rim of the scrying pool and made part of the image expand, focusing on the area Catra had indicated. A small dapple of carmine became Shadow Weaver’s robe, billowing around her as she oversaw the workers hurrying about. Adora gripped the side of the pool. Her back was to the scrying spell’s vantage point at first, until she slowly turned and looked up, seemingly locking eyes with Adora.

She shaped a rune with her sickly red magic and snapped her fingers, and the water in the scrying pool bubbled for an instant before bursting out with such force that they were all thrown back. Catra and Angella were the only ones who managed to right themselves before hitting a wall, and then only barely. Adora sank to the floor and tried to catch her breath before Catra helped her up and hesitantly went to do the same for Glimmer. “That conniving bitch, of course she was happy to let you come here. I should have cut her down when I had the chance…”

“What was she even doing?” Glimmer asked. “What is she digging up?”

Adora thumbed at the hilt of the Protector’s Sword. It had been so peaceful here that she’d almost convinced herself that she never had to leave. “I have to go find out.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Plot? In _my_ smutfic? It's more likely than you think.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some housekeeping notes I was asked to include here: the very end of this chapter has some torture, so if that's not your thing, you may want to skip the very last two paragraphs.
> 
> Also, Chapter 4 was added out of order a few weeks ago in case anyone missed it, it's pure Catra/She-Ra smut because I didn't have to move the plot forward.

It didn’t feel like getting to Grayskull the first time had taken so long.

They were even traveling lighter than when it had only been her, Bow, and her aunt making their way out of Bright Moon. No unwieldy carriages or palfreys picked for their stateliness rather than speed, just coursers and a detachment of royal guards. No afternoons spent practicing endless rounds of ceremonial and going over everything she knew about the principality, only riding and more riding until the sun fell and they were forced to make camp. She was sure that if she actually sat down and puzzled out their pace it would be faster than before, but the uneasy feeling that the land was lengthening beneath them by some twisted magic persisted.

Glimmer rolled onto her back and stared at the blankness of her tent ceiling. It had to be past midnight by now. Reciting theorems hadn’t put her out, nor had counting sheep or trying to will herself asleep, and she needed some rest. They were due to cross the border tomorrow—today, she thought—or the day after, and then they had to put together a plan. They certainly hadn’t come up with anything yet, not with everyone on edge.

She sat up and grabbed her dark blue surcoat. A walk, perhaps. Something, anything to clear her head. Glimmer pulled on her boots and poked her head through her tent flap. Adora’s steady, sedate thrum of magical energy radiated from the next tent over, though the fainter, unsteady warble that marked out Catra was absent. Glimmer frowned. She tapped more fully into her magic and cast a wider net. The signatures of her guards were familiar, but it was the uneasy presence nearby that she focused on.

Captain Jessanne was nearing the end of her watch and proved almost distressingly easy to sneak past, into the forest that hugged this side of the road. Glimmer wreathed just enough light around her hand to see where she was going, though even then she still snagged her feet a few times on exposed tree roots.

The thought of _why_ she was looking for Catra didn’t quite resolve in her head. They hadn’t spoken in weeks, hadn’t even suffered to be in the same room together before the day they departed the capital. Not since they’d sparred. Not since…Glimmer shook her head clear and bumped her hand against a tree trunk. She was not going to entertain that line of thought. Not now. They’d both been in their nerves and let it get the better of them, that was all. Glimmer found it necessary to remind herself of that every so often.

Catra had found a small clearing to practice with her daggers, no more than a dark silhouette beneath the moon that occasionally revealed a detail in Glimmer’s magelight: a glint of steel, the whirl of her tail, a flash of hair whipping through empty space. Glimmer couldn’t help but watch, imagining a horde of nondescript foes being cut to ribbons under her blades.

When her routine finished, the outline that was Catra was facing away from Glimmer, breathing heavily. She had been at this for a while, it seemed. “Don’t demiangels need rest?” Catra asked. There was a little rasp to her voice, playing at Glimmer’s ear as if it was scratching an itch.

“Don’t magicats?”

Glimmer let the magelight float from her hand and into the air between them before brightening it. Catra winced as she adjusted, then turned to face her. The daggers gleamed, the flats tapping the sides of her legs. “Couldn’t sleep.”

“We have that in common, then.”

“The difference being that you wandered into the forest without a weapon for…what reason, exactly?” Catra sheathed her blades and edged back from the light, leaving her half in darkness. She took a step to her right, which Glimmer mirrored, leaving them trailing opposite sides of the light’s reach. “You really shouldn’t have come along. Or at least waited for Arrow Boy and your aunt to answer your summons.”

“Bow. His name is Bow. And what’s the matter, you think I can’t handle myself?”

Catra’s eyes shone in the light as they circled one another. “This is our fight. Shadow Weaver is our problem, and we’ll deal with her. No need to risk your pretty little neck,” she said, then froze for an instant as Glimmer’s stomach tightened. “I don’t know if I can protect two princesses at once.”

“Need I remind you who won our last spar?”

It was, in retrospect, very much the wrong thing to say. Catra was on her so fast that Glimmer barely had time to teleport behind her, backing away as Catra jammed one foot into the ground to stop herself and about face. Her nightshirt didn’t have sleeves, affording Glimmer a remarkably clear view of the way the lithe muscles in her arms tightened. She pushed her tongue against the back of her teeth. Catra snarled and, conceding their staredown, turned away as her hands balled into fists. “So who protects you, if you’re protecting us?”

“It’s not your job to worry about me,” Catra said, and started back toward the camp. “Get some sleep, princess. We’re riding at first light.”

She didn’t wait for Glimmer to follow, and receded from view until she was nothing more than a knot of energy among the trees—bristling, tightly wound, nervous.

⁂

A pall of smoke and thick clouds hung over all of Grayskull, never the brightest or most cheerful place to begin with, and seemed to follow them as soon as they crossed the border and rode for two more days to reach the place Adora had dreamt of. Conditions on the ground were no better than those in the sky, with a thin dusting of ash and soot covering most things. Withered crops shriveled and rotted in their fields. Trees sat bare despite the season, even evergreens. Animals shuffled about and retreated fearfully from their retinue, and the people Glimmer would have expected to see as they rode were nowhere to be found.

“What did she do,” Adora would say softly whenever they passed a particularly desolate stretch. “What did she do…”

“What she always does,” Catra had said the first time Adora expressed her disbelief. “Ruins things.”

Glimmer was privy to another layer of devastation, that of the latent magical substrate that underlaid everything to some degree. Where she would have expected to reach out and feel a few sparks from the ground nearby or small knots of energy from the animals they passed, she felt only the merest meager flickers, or a complete absence. Even their group’s power felt like it was beginning to drain as they ventured deeper into the countryside, siphoned off to parts unknown. She shivered in the stagnant air.

The feeling only worsened as they drew closer to the dig site, leaving Glimmer fighting a near-constant tremble by the time they reached the edge of the pit. It extended so far down that fog had settled near the bottom. Adora retched at the sight of bodies strewn all over the place, left where they had fallen. Without any sort of railings or safety precautions, they were able to climb down onto the path that wound around the perimeter, sloping down to the bottom. Deep grooves marked the places where carts had trundled along, moving heavy loads of earth and presumably whatever the target of the excavation was.

Speculating on what that was had to wait, though, when they noticed that some of the bodies were still moving. Adora was the first to rush toward one of them, and Catra was on her heels a moment later, one dagger halfway out of its sheath as the rest followed behind.

“She just left them here after she got what she wanted,” Catra said through a growl. “We should go to the capital, it doesn’t seem like she’s here anymore.”

Adora was too busy trying to get the nearest unfortunate worker out from under a pile of earth that had fallen on his legs to reply, but Glimmer wasn’t. “Don’t you want _some_ idea of what was here that was so important Shadow Weaver drained the whole principality to get it? She was able to detect the scrying spell, she has to know someone’s coming. Better to be prepared.”

“I’ve been prepared to gut her like a fish for a long time,” Catra muttered.

They didn’t go to the capital. Adora set the guards to recovering everyone still alive in the pit and doing what they could to heal them while she, Catra, and Glimmer descended deeper, toward the fog that had settled at the bottom. In contrast to the rest of the countryside, there was a decided thrum of magic here, setting Glimmer on edge with its strength. It was vaguely similar to Adora’s, a prickle at her spine that settled in her stomach.

Glimmer shaped a rune with her staff and whisked away the fog when they were close to it, but it began to settle again almost immediately after her spell had run its course. Catra sliced at some with her dagger. “Is this magic? Or poison?” Adora asked.

“Magic, maybe. Or it might just be mist settling since it’s so humid. Perhaps it rained recently,” Glimmer said.

She tried once more to dispel it with a more forceful spell, and it cleared enough that they could see where the dirt path gave over to stone and tile. Some kind of building. The ruins Catra had mentioned? Whatever it was, a large section of wall had been crudely removed, allowing entrance to the buried structure. Adora drew her sword, Catra slipped her second dagger from its sheath, and Glimmer lit the end of her staff to show the way as they stepped inside. “Definitely magic,” she said as she crossed the threshold and felt it buffet her. When she looked back, she saw that the settling fog stopped abruptly at the opening. “Old magic. Imperial…what’s that?”

_That_ was a high-pitched skittering sound, clanging almost like metal that grew closer with worrying rapidity. A small metal construct on eight or so legs stepped into the light projected from Glimmer’s staff, made of what looked like brass inscribed all over with runes and resembling an overgrown spider far too much for comfort.

It did nothing at first, shifting its weight from one side to the other, until Adora cautiously poked at it with the tip of her sword. The runes on its body flared a sickly red as it lunged forward, its foremost legs extended. Catra shouldered past Adora and sank her daggers into it before it could jump, releasing a puff of golden smoke as the legs went limp. When Catra pulled her blades back, it released a long, piercing whine that made them all stumble back.

When it faded and Glimmer’s ears stopped ringing, she edged closer to the construct and jabbed at it a few times with the end of her staff. “What is that thing?” Catra asked, still gripping her daggers tightly. A few smoky wisps rose off the blades. “Something Shadow Weaver left for us?”

“I think it’s her magic, but she didn’t make these…”

“How can you tell?”

“The underlying spells are gold, not red,” Glimmer said matter-of-factly. When Catra just looked blankly at her, she elaborated. “Different kinds of magic have different colors? Imperial magic is gold, like how Adora would look when she transforms if the spell wasn’t so bright. Bright Moon magic is violet, Salineas magic is green, Shadow Weaver’s magic is red—well, it’s actually Mystacori blue that she’s corrupted by blending it with the Black Garnet fragment that she has…you’re very far away right now, aren’t you?”

“I got the gist, magic is colorful. But that thing flashed red before it attacked, she had to have done something to it.”

The sound of more skittering legs from deeper in the building cut them off. “We’ll have to save the lesson for later,” Adora said, and the jewel in her sword’s hilt flared to wrap her in light.

Rather than risk damaging her staff by swinging wildly—it was no sword, and the hartshorn core couldn’t be replaced—Glimmer balanced the haft on her forearm and fired off a volley of bolts to destroy what few constructs made it past Adora’s broad, sweeping strikes and Catra’s vicious thrusts. Their targets weren’t very durable, collapsing with only a strike or two, but there seemed to be no end to them. Even when the broken husks began piling up in front of them, more simply climbed over to lunge at them and try to latch on. One eventually did make it through their defense, jumping over the bolt Glimmer launched at it before the legs closed around her head.

A painful shock arced from her cheek to the rest of her head, making her vision spot out until the construct’s body crumpled in a screech of crunching metal and a puff of smoke. Adora ripped it away and threw it into another—from what Glimmer could tell. The haze of smoke in front of her face obscured what was happening as she coughed to try and expel the mouthful she had breathed in. The violet glow around the jeweled end of her staff flickered gold as the different types of magic clashed. “Eyes up, princess!” Catra said as she severed a few legs from another construct.

Adora had had enough. She wound the Protector’s Sword back over her shoulder, almost scraping the ceiling with the tip of the blade, and swung it down in a crushing diagonal slash. The piles of destroyed constructs flew back in a wave, taking the still-active ones with them into the darkness until they crashed against something that made the walls around them shake. Ancient dust fell from the ceiling and made them all twitch. A moment passed. Another. No more sounds of skittering machines.

“Huh, maybe we should start with that next time,” Adora said. Glimmer wasn’t used to hearing her voice when she was like this, deeper and more authoritative, but it hardly warranted complaint. She turned back to Glimmer. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah, thank you…”

“What were you saying about color?” Catra asked, using one dagger to gesture vaguely in her direction. “Because that’s not purple.”

“Violet, Bright Moon magic is violet, not—” Glimmer flared the glow at the end of her staff to make the point, only to bathe them all in golden light. “Oh. Hold on.”

It took some effort, but her magic eventually returned to the correct color. Mostly. Flecks of gold still swirled among the violet. “Er, that should go back to normal eventually. I must have breathed in more of that smoke than I thought.”

“I’m not carrying you if you collapse,” Catra said bluntly.

“It’s not your job to worry about me.”

She smirked, satisfied at turning Catra’s words back on her, as Catra sheathed her daggers with a scowl. “We can keep going now, as long as your light still works,” Adora said. Glimmer expanded the glow until they could see for a good stretch in front of them, down a corridor that branched off in several places. The whole place ached with magic, such that Glimmer felt it in her bones. “I really hope there aren’t more of those things.”

“Don’t tempt fate,” Catra mumbled.

They cut a cautious path deeper into the building, poking through the rooms that branched off the corridor they had wandered into to make sure nothing was going to spring to life and come up on them from behind. When they came across the pile of destroyed constructs, they ran a few through for good measure.

“You don’t need to stab _everything_ , I don’t think what’s left of that bowl is going to attack us,” Glimmer said as Catra pulled her dagger back from the now-shattered bits of pottery.

“How do you know?” Catra rounded on a bit of threadbare tapestry next and sliced through the middle, letting the faded scene it depicted flutter down to the floor. “No sense risking it.”

“I was reading that,” Adora complained.

She looked back at them when neither Glimmer nor Catra offered a response and cocked her head quizzically. “What?”

“You can read Eternian?” Glimmer asked.

Adora picked up the severed tapestry and let it hang in her hands. “Is that what this is?”

“I thought this was a First Ones ruin,” Catra said.

“Well, they didn’t call themselves _First Ones_ , their name for their own civilization was Eternian. A bit presumptuous as far as names go…that’s not the point. Adora, were you taught their language? Or is it your transformation?”

“We never really had lessons in the First Ones’ language. Not very much, anyway.”

“Just enough to learn their swear words,” Catra said.

Glimmer rolled her eyes and held her staff closer to the tapestry. The language used combining logographs to represent different phonemes that ran smoothly into one another, creating an unbroken line that told a story her own language would need a paragraph to describe. “So, what does it say? I’ve only ever read Eternian in translation.”

“Um…just a second, I have to figure out how to say this.” Adora stuck her tongue from the side of her mouth as she concentrated. Cute, Glimmer thought. “All right. This is about a war against…Salure? Saluriea?”

“Saluriae,” Glimmer prompted. “It was one of the names of the imperial province that eventually became Salineas after the empire fell.”

“Then this is about subjugating Salineas. Their sea magic was overpowering the imperial blockade just as the queen was on the brink of capitulating, but then the empire’s…shura? No, shera. I think it means _champion_. Not in the winner-of-something sense, their foremost warrior. _Paragon_ might be a better word. She defeated the mages and forced Salineas to surrender. That figure there, near the middle.”

The rendition of the imperial champion was a figure clad in gold and white, notably taller than the queen from whom she was accepting the Salinean crown. In her other hand was a shining gladius, its blade as wide as her arm, highlighted on the tapestry with crushed pearls to make it shimmer under the light.

“Does it say anything else?” Catra asked. Adora turned the tapestry over, but the other side was blank. “Well, this probably isn’t what Shadow Weaver was looking for, anyway. Let’s keep going.”

Most of the tapestries they came across as they ventured deeper into the building had rotted and faded too badly for Adora to read, but there were also large sections of tilework that hadn’t been weathered to illegibility. Many of them told similar stories, chronicles of conquest by that generation’s paragon, always holding aloft the same sword. Others were bits and pieces of imperial genealogies, showing which child of this or that ruler manifested the power of their bloodline. Still others described rebellions against the ruling class, garishly describing what retribution the imperial paragons meted out. Adora dutifully translated each one they came across, her voice growing duller and duller as they continued.

“This one’s another account of an uprising over tax burdens,” she said, weakly waving her hand at a small section of wall in another chamber. A number of shabbily-dressed figures were suspended by shackles around their hands in front of the paragon, heads bent in whatever contrition the artist imagined for them. “You can see how it went.”

“You don’t have to keep translating, this is getting macabre,” Glimmer said.

Adora hefted her sword up and turned it a few times, letting the light dance across the blade. “Who decided to call this the Protector’s Sword? I haven’t seen it protect anything except people who used it to try and grind the world under their heel.”

Catra put a hand on Adora’s arm, but she shrugged it away. “Come on, it was a long time ago.”

“That doesn’t make it right.”

She led the way back to the main corridor, leaving Glimmer to rush to keep up and provide enough light to see. The corridor finally let out into a larger space—or it had been a larger space before whatever cave-in had left it impossible to go any further forward. Glimmer brushed some dirt out of the way and felt her foot settle in a groove left by a cartwheel. “Whatever was worth excavating was farther in, it was brought out this way,” she said, and tilted her staff to the left. “Is that an opening there?”

“What _was_ this place, anyway?” Catra asked as they went around the edge of the chamber. “Some kind of weird monument to all their violence?”

“A temple for the imperial cult, I think,” Adora said. Part of the wall had been removed with some degree of care where the cart tracks led, as opposed to the general collapse in other parts of the room. She brushed her hand over another length of Eternian script on the wall, inlaid with gold leaf except for the very last segment. Adora paused to read it. “Another genealogy and list of paragons. It looks like the last one.”

“What makes you say that?” Glimmer said.

Adora dragged her fingers down the empty space below the list. “All the others went farther down. And this last name here, Mara—” Glimmer held her light closer to the wall— “someone took the time to pick out the embellishment, scour the stone, and etch another word here. _Proditor_. Traitor.”

“The champion who rebelled and brought down the empire,” Glimmer said.

Catra tapped one of her blades against the wall. “Great, the one thing Shadow Weaver didn’t lie about and it doesn’t help at all. Can we see what’s down here and then leave? This place is making my fur stand on end.”

She was right, if inelegant, Glimmer thought. Venturing deeper into the complex had only amplified the latent magic hanging in the air around them, resonating and reverberating until the whole place seemed unduly alive, as if ancient priests and mages still walked the halls.

The path through the broken wall had no side chambers, no twists and turns. It was a simple, efficient bore down into the earth below, propped up by wooden supports here and there. Deep grooves had been worn into the floor where carts had hauled out material, likely brought only as far as the main chamber, where it could be added to the leavings of the cave-in. Pickaxes and shovels lay strewn about, left where they’d fallen. Glimmer tried not to wonder about where the workers had gone.

It was becoming a struggle to breathe by the time the path stopped sloping and leveled out, and their pace slowed considerably as they came to what had been a massive stone door in a deeper part of the temple, braced around its edges with rune-inscribed steel. The wall around it had been dug out, and the door itself left to fall to the floor and crush the tilework at their feet. Adora pinched the bridge of her nose as light burst out of her, unable to maintain the transformation any longer. She staggered with the weight of the sword, only for Catra to grab her and keep her upright. “I’m fine, I’m fine,” she said, as if heading off their concerns. Adora stood under her own power and stepped onto the stone door. “Let’s keep going.”

There wasn’t much farther to go. Past the door was a single chamber, dug out and supported with more wooden beams. Little remained besides a few torches and hand tools, left here and there without a thought. The only other thing of note was a large indentation at the opposite end of the room, empty of whatever had shaped the surrounding earth into such unnaturally straight lines. Glimmer buzzed with the latent energy scattered throughout the chamber, so dense and immediate that it almost seemed as if she could reach out and touch it.

Adora stepped forward first. “This is the room I saw in my dream,” she said, and turned around to look at the entrance from the inside. “I was facing this way, but farther back, and everything was blurry. Like I was seeing through glass.”

“Or the surface of a crystal?” Glimmer asked. The details began to slot into place in her mind and made her stomach sink. “Like Grayskull’s runestone?”

“Grayskull doesn’t _have_ a runestone. No one even thought we had any magic of our own,” Catra said dismissively.

“It didn’t have a known one. Maybe because it’s been buried here for centuries? People forget where things are all the time, and it would have been easy to lose track of when the empire collapsed. But Adora can obviously tap into imperial magic, and so could those creepy crawling things, that power has to come from somewhere. And what else could be down here that a mage would be willing to go to such lengths to get?”

Catra was obstinate, but she wasn’t unreasonable. After a moment to save face she conceded with a shrug and said, “I suppose.”

“But where did it go?” Adora asked. “Why move it at all? Look at that indentation, it has to be enormous.”

“Not like she was the one breaking her back to haul it out of here,” Catra said, her voice dripping with disdain.

Adora stepped closer to the spot where the runestone had sat, hidden away for so long and then carelessly removed, until her foot came down at the edge of the indentation. A rune spun to life beneath her, shining a sickly, pulsing red.

“ _Adora_!”

Glimmer and Catra shouted in concert as they both bolted toward her. Too much of the rune was obscured for Glimmer to know what it was for, but it couldn’t be anything good. A number of possibilities, each more unpleasant than the last, made her stomach drop while she ran as fast as her legs would carry her. Catra, being the trained soldier, closed the distance first and tackled Adora away from the rune. She struck the wall just as Glimmer crashed into Catra in turn, throwing her clear and offering a mere instant to lock eyes.

_It's not your job to worry about me._

Everything vanished.

This wasn’t teleporting as she knew it. This was being ripped out of place with no warning, as if being yanked through an opening that was far too small. Her skin burned, and the breath she had been taking rushed out of her and left her clawing at her throat as the world resolved around her into familiar shapes and colors.

In between her gasps, Glimmer took in the sight of the Grayskull throne room, empty, its banners torn down and furniture removed—except for the throne nearby. Above it, a massive golden runestone floated, filled with countless facets that caught the light and scattered it as starbursts. Glimmer couldn’t help marveling at it for a moment before realizing that she was trapped. The filmy cylinder her, ever so faintly tinted red, was easy to miss until her fingers bumped into it and made the color flare more intensely. She pulled her hand back when the sheer surface shocked her, leaving the skin smarting.

“What have we here?”

A chill ran down Glimmer’s spine as she turned around. Shadow Weaver loomed over the container—a cage, more like—and looked blankly at her quarry from behind that garish mask. Her sleek black hair and the fringes of her cloak flicked and floated in contradictory directions from the magic radiating off of her. There wasn’t space to back away from her, but Glimmer was still tempted. “The snare should have reacted to the sword…well. You aren’t the princess I meant to catch, but I suppose I can’t have _everything_ go right.”

Glimmer tried to teleport out of her confinement, but the only result was another painful shock for her trouble. “I’m going to give you one chance to let me go and avoid having Bright Moon’s army take this place apart stone by stone,” she said, summoning up as much authority as she could muster.

“Your Highness is so generous. I think I’ll take my chances.”

She spun a narrow filament out of thin air and let one end drift to the floor immediately outside the cage, onto an unfamiliar rune that had been carved into the stone beneath Glimmer’s feet. The other end remained between her fingers as she strolled with no great hurry to the runestone set above the throne. A faint glow shone as it touched the surface, trailing down to the rune under Glimmer. “What can you even do with that? You don’t have Eternian magic, only Adora does. All you have is the Mystacori form you’ve perverted.”

Shadow Weaver looked at her and, without breaking eye contact, dragged the nail of one finger against the runestone. Flecks of golden light dispersed into the air around her, and the next rune she shaped, creating a harmless illusory butterfly that flew for only moments before disappearing, was distinctly gold. “All magic is Eternian,” Shadow Weaver said in a slow, patronizing voice, as if she were educating a child. “This form is just…purer.”

Glimmer had no wish to believe her, but she _did_ feel a shift in the magical energy surrounding Shadow Weaver, not dissimilar from the way she felt after inhaling the smoke from the guardian construct. “Imagine it. The power of a nation at your fingertips. Not shared, not split, not diluted. All of that energy working toward a single end. You must understand, being a mage.”

“I understand that you’ve completely lost your mind. That Black Garnet fragment has addled your brains if you think you can handle that much power.”

“So short-sighted.” Shadow Weaver reached through the cage, her hand passing effortlessly through the surface, and stroked Glimmer’s cheek. She pulled away, only for Shadow Weaver to grab her by the throat, hard enough that breathing became a conscious effort. “Just like Micah.”

“Keep my father’s name off your tongue,” Glimmer spat.

The hand around her neck tightened before letting her go. Shadow Weave flicked her fingers as if she was trying to get something off her fingers. “No matter. Adora would have made a better conduit for all of this power, but you should suffice for now. Until she gets here and offers to take your place, disgustingly noble as she is.” Shadow Weaver produced the end of another filament from her sleeve and flicked it toward Glimmer, passing through the cage and fixing to the hollow of her throat. “Shall we begin?”

“I’m a mage too, do you think I can’t resist this?”

Shadow Weaver took the filament in her hand and made it shine gold, forcing the runestone to glow until it lit the whole chamber. Glimmer braced herself, but it was woefully insufficient against the pain that wracked her an instant later, against the runestone’s energy as it flowed into her and then back out, to Shadow Weaver. Tears pricked at her eyes and dissolved from the heat before they had a chance to fall. Her head spun and she sank to her knees, choking back a scream. Glimmer wouldn’t give her the satisfaction.

“No, I don’t.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Putting a warning here for some brief transphobia, because Shadow Weaver is just that flavor of awful

_It’s not your job to worry about me._

Catra’s words burned in her throat as they rode for the capital, limited only by how long their horses could stay at a gallop. The reins dug into her hands. Steady, sustained hoofbeats pounded a rhythm into her head. Ash and dust hanging in the air stung her eyes and flecked on her fur, and the stench of smoke left her struggling not to cough. That was a waste of energy now. All she could do was try and keep pace with the others.

Glimmer hadn’t been trying to save _her_ , Catra knew. She had simply gotten to Adora first. Of course she had, she was more agile than a human and trained besides. If that stupid princess had only taken a moment to think about what she was doing, none of this would have happened. Catra knew she could have moved clear of the rune before it tripped.

Not that she’d taken a moment to think about it. She had just…reacted, the same as Glimmer.

Catra spurred her horse again and got a snort in response.

The Bright Moon soldiers had been apoplectic when she and Adora returned to the surface without their princess. Adora said only what was necessary to get them to ride for the capital rather than withdraw for reinforcements and cost them time they didn’t have. Catra couldn’t say anything at all. The instant before Glimmer vanished when they had locked eyes and Catra felt panic, genuine panic at her inability to do anything, had been seared too deeply onto her thoughts to string together a sentence. That she’d been cogent enough at all to follow Adora—to do her job—must have counted as a small miracle.

A very small miracle, all things considered.

The sun had nearly reached the western horizon when they approached the castle town that sat at the base of the hill where Castle Grayskull stood, as sinister and imposing as ever. Perhaps even more so now, with the way thick, steel-gray clouds hung unmoving over the place. For little more than a best guess, it seemed to have borne fruit. With precious few other strongpoints in the principality, Shadow Weaver hadn’t even bothered leaving. She meant to usurp Grayskull entirely, pull it out from under Adora and then hole up in her home, defying her to come and take it back.

It stank of a trap. And they really had no choice but to walk right into it.

They left the horses and crept into the town on foot. Catra took some ash-covered cloaks from an abandoned drying line, trying not to think of what had become of the owners, and gave one to Adora so they could conceal themselves. “I heard plenty of times how difficult it would be for anyone to get to the castle without somebody noticing,” Adora said. Bitterness tinged her voice. “I didn’t need a practical lesson.”

“Let me see what sticks out.”

Catra gave the wall of the home they had stopped behind a few firm shoves to make sure it was stable, then launched herself from a windowsill to the window above her. Once more and she was clambering onto the roof. It was only thatch over wooden supports, forcing her to keep on all fours to distribute her weight over a larger area. Carefully, slower than she would have liked, she crept forward, all the way to the other end of the house where she had a better sightline on the castle’s main approach and front gate.

“Why…?”

The drawbridge was down and the portcullises were up. She couldn’t see any archers prowling the battlements, ready to take up at the machicolations or balistrarias. The massive ballista set at the southwest corner, always scrupulously maintained should the drawbridge need to be destroyed quickly and everyone on it sent into the moat, sat unloaded and unmanned. There _were_ guards, or at least things in the shapes of guards. No matter how she squinted or craned her neck for a better look, the figures on the bridge and their weapons only seemed to exist in silhouette, like shadows that had decided to stand up and walk away from their owners. More of Shadow Weaver’s puppets, dancing on her strings. Her own creations this time, Catra thought. Something even larger than the phantom sentries lurked in the first courtyard, composed of the same apparent absence as the others.

Her fur stood on end. Shadow Weaver wasn’t trying to ward them off. She had laid out an invitation, a gauntlet for them to spill their blood on. And then, once they were weak, all she had to was swoop down on them.

Catra sat on the roof and pulled the borrowed cloak tighter around herself. How was she supposed to assess this? She knew the answer to that: ride away and come back with whatever mages Bright Moon could bring to bear. It was sensible and avoided as much needless danger as possible.

Adora would never go for it.

The smart bet put Glimmer somewhere inside and Adora wouldn’t countenance leaving her there any longer than was absolutely necessary. Catra’s stomach twisted as well at the idea of her languishing at Shadow Weaver’s mercy.

For a brief moment, Catra wondered if she could persuade Adora to, if not find an army to stage a siege, then at least hang back while she and the soldiers cut their way through the shadow creatures. That hope died as soon as it spun into existence. Apart from being their single largest force multiplier, Adora didn’t care for letting others do the work or get hurt in her stead. It was what made her a good ruler, and infuriatingly difficult to protect.

Before jumping off the roof, Catra looked over the roads she could see. No people, but lots of dark corners. Lots of places where shadow beings could hide. And there was always the possibility of more runes lying in wait, ready to grab anyone unlucky enough to trip them.

Adora was poking her head around the corner to check the main approach when Catra worked her way back down. “I couldn’t see any of the sally ports, but I’ll bet they’re blocked. No archers, no one on the ballista. The main gate is open, but guarded by what look like shadows. More magic. Assuming the path up to the drawbridge isn’t trapped and there aren’t any ambushes waiting, she’s cut off any option but a frontal assault,” she said. The summary sounded more leading than she liked, but Shadow Weaver had forced her hand even there. “Considering that she’s probably concentrated her forces for that, coming back with an army and laying siege would be the safer option, but…”

“But?” Adora prompted.

“But I didn’t think you would find that acceptable, so I’m trying to think of how to split our forces. Storm the castle, kill the evil chancellor, rescue the princess. All the storybooks where this happened were light on the details for this part.” Catra closed her eyes and tried to picture the town from above, placing figures to represent them all at different spots. She worked the inside of her cheek between her teeth. She was a guard, not a strategist. Not even a tactician. Anything more than securing a few rooms at a time was outside of her specialty.

“There was a wide road cutting up toward the castle a few blocks back,” one of the Bright Moon soldiers said. Perhaps the captain, judging by the extra stripe on her pauldrons. Catra hadn’t bothered learning any of their names. “Does it go right up to the moat?”

Adora frowned. “That’s the old parade road. But it’s set at an angle and curves at the northern end, we wouldn’t be able to see right to the castle if we went that way. And it would turn into a killing field if they used the ballista.”

“It’s not loaded now,” Catra said. The bolts took an expert crew at least a minute to load and position. For a forewarned group, that might leave enough time to scatter behind some of the sturdier buildings. Might. Catra took one of her daggers and sketched out an overview of the southern part of the town. “You’re all mages, you would probably have an easier time fighting shadow creatures than us. If you drew off some of the sentries to the parade road, we could take the main street and get into the castle. The outer keep is a maze, we’re the only ones here who could navigate it quickly anyway.”

“We’d be leaving them to fight for who knows how long,” Adora said in protest.

“Then we’ll have to be quick. These aren’t imperial constructs, they have to be Shadow Weaver’s own magic. They’re shadows, it’s in the name. Killing her should dispel them.”

Might, could, should. Hardly a solid plan. Catra twirled the dagger around her first finger, a show of skill to mask her trepidation. “She’s set the game board. If we’re not going back to Bright Moon for reinforcements, we don’t have a choice but to play.”

The soldiers looked at one another, and Catra tried not to think about how her plan would almost inevitably mean some of them dying far from home. If they had any better ideas, she would have jumped on them. But they weren’t discussing anything. They were making peace with it. Balancing the scales with themselves on one side and their princess on the other. The officer who had spoken before turned to Catra and Adora and nodded. “We’ll buy you all the time we can. Just do what you need to do.”

“We will,” Catra said.

Their group—maybe twenty-five, all told—formed up to make a conspicuous march up the parade road. Adora looked away and shook her head. “I hope they make it through this.

“They’re royal guards. They’re more concerned about making sure their princess is safe than anything else. If that means risking their lives, maybe dying…sometimes that’s what it means. Part of the training.”

“Would you?” Adora asked. “For me?”

“Of course,” Catra said, immediately.

“I’d rather you live.”

A sentiment kinder than it was practical. Of all the rubbish Shadow Weaver had tried to hammer into her head over the years, the idea that her life was a worthy trade for Adora’s was one of the only things to stick. Catra watched the soldiers round the corner and launch their distraction. She turned and softly kissed Adora’s cheek. “Come on. We have to go.”

They advanced along one side of the main road, ducking into alleys when they could to minimize their profile. Sentries were beginning to file out of the castle toward the southwestern path, a swirling mass of shadows toting spears and halberds made of the same inky, almost-human darkness as the soldiers. Catra picked up pebbles and scattered handfuls in front of them before they moved up to each hiding spot, but no more runes appeared. There didn’t seem to be a risk of suddenly disappearing into Shadow Weaver’s clutches any longer. She wanted them to take the long way.

Once they were close to the drawbridge, waiting behind an overturned wagon, Catra poked her head up just enough to try and see what they were dealing with while the sounds of battle raged nearby. A scream made her grip harder at the daggers in her hands. “I hope that big one was just a trick of the light…”

“Big one?”

“Right, I should’ve mentioned that. If the, uh, bigger version of you is ready to show up again, this would be a good time.”

Adora drew her sword and, quite in contrast to the idea of _hiding_ , blazed with light. The wagon barely hid Adora like this, even kneeling down. “I see two more that hung back near the outer portcullis, I think I can draw them—”

The wagon lifted right in front of her, costing them their hiding spot, and Adora threw it across the length of the drawbridge. Both of the shadows burst into wisps, clearing the way apart from the remains of the wagon, dashed against the stone of the curtain wall.

“—out. I guess the imperial paragon was never one for subtlety.”

“No time,” Adora said, grabbing her sword and making for the castle. Catra tried to get ahead of her to check for traps, but it was enough effort just to keep up. Adora was no lout on any ordinary day, but like this she might have outrun a hawk.

Whatever had been lurking in the outer courtyard was no longer there. It was too large to hide behind anything, and Catra allowed herself a sigh of relief. Still, something about the castle was deeply and fundamentally _wrong_ , with magic seeming to crackle in the air around them. Even with no aptitude for it whatsoever, she could still feel it making her fur stand on end. “We should take the western halls into the keep, it’s the fastest way to…where are we going, exactly?” Catra asked. There were any number of places Shadow Weaver could have fortified. Her office, her apartments, the library, that garden where she kept her gruesome poison flowers. Checking everywhere would drag them into a war of attrition with whatever forces still lurked inside the castle.

“We’ll figure it out.”

Not a day for detailed plans. Rather than go to the entrance, Adora slammed her shoulder into the keep wall and knocked enough stone out of place to make her own opening—even so, she had to dip her head down to step into the dusty storeroom on the other side. “We still have to live here,” Catra hissed, but Adora looked ready to pull the whole castle apart if it would cut a few seconds from their search time. The door into the hallway nearly fell off its hinges with how Adora yanked on it, and a frenetic skittering when they went into the corridor made them stop to look around. Another construct rounded the corner to their right on its spindly, spidery legs, but this one was larger than those at the temple, its body concealed beneath a wisping black shroud and red runes that swirled across the surface. “Really? More of these?”

This one didn’t wait to be attacked before wailing for its comrades. Catra’s ears ached as she ran toward it, ready to bury her daggers into whatever was inside its body, only to have the points of her blades sink between the runes to no noticeable effect. She might as well have been stabbing smoke for all the good it did. One of its legs slammed into her side, all too solid now, and Catra was only barely able to twist away from the brunt of the impact. One of her daggers went cleanly through another leg, leaving no trace but an angry ripple through the runes.

Adora charged it next, her sword drawn back to strike, but it too did nothing. Before she could reassess, her momentum carried her into another slash as she took a step forward to steady herself. The construct recoiled the slightest bit, but didn’t split in two as it should have.

They tried again. Catra aimed for the largest rune, tracking its movement and stabbing it in the middle, but it was no more effective than any other hit they landed. “What—is—this?” Adora asked in between fruitless hits. The stone under their feet rumbled with the approach of whatever reinforcements this thing had called.

Catra ducked beneath one of the legs swiping at her and inadvertently scraped her dagger on the floor. The construct stopped the jab it was aiming at Adora and shrank in on itself, as if pain had shot through it. “Why,” Catra began, then looked down at the scratch her dagger had left in the floor. With the way the nearest torch was throwing its light, the blade had passed over the construct’s shadow. She tried a stronger, intentional swipe, hard enough to throw a few sparks. It screeched in something resembling pain, and Catra could have kicked herself for not realizing it before they’d started wearing themselves down. “Adora, the shadow is the real body, we need to hit that!”

Before it could move and attack again, Catra sank one dagger into the nearest leg to immobilize it. The part that had been attacking them and shrugging off their blades—Catra wondered briefly if it was the thing’s actual shadow, but the thought was just too bizarre to follow right now—strained to get away, but it was unable to move before Adora stabbed at the shape on the floor. There was another ear-splitting wail, and a spray of thick black liquid erupted at the point where the Protector’s Sword had struck the shadow. It was warm like blood when droplets landed on Catra’s arm. The runes on the body slowed before fading, and without its magic it collapsed in a heap.

Adora pulled her sword out of the stone and wiped her face clean of whatever had spewed out of the shadow. Catra tapped her thumbs against the flats of her blades as another corrupted construct crept around the corner. Then another. There were half a dozen of them at the next corridor, staring them down, before a massive shadowy hand, unsettlingly human-shaped and nearly of a height with a transformed Adora, clutched the wall.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Catra said under her breath. She readied her daggers again, but Adora struck the corridor’s northern wall with enough precision to destroy only a small section, allowing access to a closet full of lye and other cleaning sundries.

“Go. I can deal with these.”

“Adora—”

“Please don’t argue. Just find Glimmer for me, all right? And kill Shadow Weaver. If anyone deserves to do it, it’s you.”

She hooked one finger into Catra’s collar to hold her in place as she leaned down to kiss her. It was crushing, almost bruising in its intensity, and left Catra breathless when they eased back. “Yes, Your Majesty.”

Catra didn’t have the chance to see what lumbered around the corner before Adora nudged her back and struck the ceiling, collapsing the opening she’d made. The sound of a battle cry made Catra’s heart lurch, and she had to force herself to turn away and figure out where to go.

The servants’ wing, that was what this was. She so rarely had occasion to come here anymore. Catra stepped out of the dormitory she’d ended up in, looking warily down the hall for any more of Shadow Weaver’s creeping crawling drones. Nothing she could see. The torches had started to burn down here, and the carpet running the length of the corridor didn’t seem disturbed. Not a high priority for witches looking to take over the castle, then.

The claws on her feet tapped against the stone floor, and her ears pricked at the sound of a sharp breath in one of the rooms. Catra crept toward the source, the other dormitory room opposite her unceremonious entrance. The door was slightly ajar, and she pushed it open with the tip of her dagger to survey the interior. Without a window or any lit torches inside, everything beyond the sliver from the open door was visible only in outline. More breathing as the door creaked on its hinges. Had those little demons breathed?

 _Bump_.

Catra pushed the door open the rest of the way so she could see the wardrobes at the far end of the room, including one whose doors were rattling. She stepped in and removed the metal decoration that had fallen onto the knobs, holding them in place, and yanked the door open.

“Please don’t hurt me!”

“Kyle?”

“Catra? Er, Captain, I mean?”

She moved back to let him step out of the wardrobe, picking a pair of breeches off his head and waiting for him to collect himself. “I can’t believe you’re back…is Ador—is the princess here?”

There was a worryingly large rumble behind Catra. “She sent me to find Her Royal Sparkliness. What were you doing in there?”

“Hiding,” he said, as if that wasn’t obvious. “Someone had to stay behind to conceal the passage everyone else used to get out. I guess I closed the door too hard earlier and jammed it. Did you say the Bright Moon princess is here, too?”

Catra made a mental note to assign a hair more respect to Kyle for staying to make sure the rest of the servantry was able to get out of the castle. For now, she had more pressing matters. “Do you know where Shadow Weaver is?”

“Couldn’t say, I’ve been locked in there a while.” He was a terrible liar, and it only took a frown from Catra before he crumbled. “Please…she’ll kill me if I tell you.”

She flipped one dagger up and rested the point against the hollow of his throat. “I’ll kill you if you don’t,” Catra lied.

The nearer threat won out. “I don’t know exactly where she is. Honest. I saw something being hauled in on a wagon the other day, into the throne room. It was covered with a sheet, but it was big. That’s all I know.”

Of course it was the throne room. Why hadn’t she thought of that earlier? “Thanks. Now stay put.” Catra put him back in the wardrobe and shut the doors.

Getting to the innermost part of the castle was unnervingly easy. The straightforward, unimpeded walk was hardly something to complain about, though it made Catra’s stomach tighten when she thought of where the absent sentries might have gone. Her fur was bristling when she came to the grand double doors that marked off the throne room, listening to the pained sounds from within. Catra linked her daggers so she had one hand free to shove the doors open.

The enormous golden crystal that must have been Grayskull’s runestone hovered above the throne where Shadow Weaver sat, sprawled almost lazily without a care for Glimmer in some kind of magical cage beside her. She was down on her knees, hugging herself and in obvious pain, looking up only after a moment to see what the noise was.

“And here I thought you’d be the last one to show up,” Shadow Weaver drawled. “You’re always so late for everything else.”

“Let her go. Only warning.”

Shadow Weaver cocked her head in amusement as Catra looked up at the crystal. She stood and tapped it, making gold dust fall. “The primal runestone…do you know why it was here, under this sad little patch of land? This was the imperial family’s retreat when the First Ones still ruled. The seat of their personal power, drawn from this, before Crown Princess Mara sank it all beneath the ground and sundered the empire. All that power and no will to use it. Can you imagine? The most powerful nation in the world destroyed by one stupid girl’s simpering sentimentality. A mistake I don’t intend to repeat. Her Highness has been so helpful in making this usable. Haven’t you, Glimmer?”

She formed a rune with that festering red magic of hers—now tinged with gold, Catra saw—and the faint barrier around Glimmer constricted slightly. Part of it touched her knee, making her leap up with a yelp, only for the momentum to knock her back into the other side. Her cries of pain made Catra grip tighter at her daggers. “Let her out of your damned magic and I’ll make this quick.”

Catra edged into the room, pulling the door shut behind her before crossing half the distance to the throne. Shadow Weaver ignored her and tapped at some kind of cord coming out of the runestone and running toward Glimmer. “You weren’t always this unappreciative. I remember little Leo being oh so grateful after begging me to fix him with my _damned magic_. And now look at you. A defiant little ingrate.”

Her heart leapt into her throat, but Catra still managed to hiss and bare her fangs. Shadow Weaver turned back to her. “I’m not without my own sentimentality, you know. Put that ridiculous weapon away and I’ll let you walk out of here. Take Adora with you. I’ll even keep the obstacle to you being together here with me. But you should hurry…that magic of hers isn’t going to last once her runestone has no more power.”

She considered it. She hated herself for considering it, and she hated how easy it was to imagine simply slipping away, spinning some lie to Adora and leading her far from here, somewhere they could live without worrying about all of this. What a cruel choice. Catra looked at Glimmer, who was fighting through whatever pain she was in to match her gaze. No, there was never any choice to make. None at all.

Catra launched herself at Shadow Weaver, hoping to catch her off-guard and end this quickly, but she had no such luck. She batted Catra aside with one hand and sent her flying into Glimmer’s cage. Pain ripped through her back and side where she struck the surface, intense enough to make her convulse in her haste to get away from it and into a better position. The smell of singed fur stung her nose. Shadow Weaver flicked her hand as if she were brushing off some irritating speck. “You really should have walked away.”

A bolt of energy shot from Shadow Weaver’s hand, barely pushed off-course when Catra turned her daggers to divert it. The metal warmed against her palms, and a faint orange glow appeared at the point of impact on the blade, where the blast had heated it.

Another shot, and another. Catra turned one away and jumped from the other, loosening her grip on her daggers when the heat began to sting. “How does it feel?” Shadow Weaver asked as she stepped away from the throne. She no longer had to shape the runes before they appeared in her hands, alternating red and gold. “Knowing you’ve signed your own death warrant? I should’ve known you’d be too hard-headed to do what’s best for you. Too much like your little princess.”

Her mention of Adora made Catra leap at her again, not head-on but angled ever so slightly. She hit the floor and dropped into a slide, rending a length of Shadow Weaver’s robe before scrambling to recover and turning to face her. Some kind of dark, smoky ether billowed from the cut before Shadow Weaver clutched the fabric.

It was a fluke, Catra quickly realized. She wasn’t able to get close enough to repeat her trick again before a storm of runes blew out through the throne room, denying fully half the space unless Catra was willing to risk being shocked or worse if she lost her footing. She flashed her fangs as she tried to plot a route that didn’t leave her vulnerable. There weren’t many options, and she had turned away so many bolts that her daggers were practically burning in her hands. One way or another, this fight couldn’t last much longer. Energy swirled around Shadow Weaver’s hand all the while, waiting for her to make a move. Toying with her. Like it was all some game.

And the stakes weren’t high enough for her liking, it seemed. She balled one hand into a fist, and the barrier around Glimmer started shrinking again. Glimmer tried to move away from the part in front of her, only to gasp when she struck the section at her side. Catra could swear the grotesque lines of Shadow Weaver’s mask twisted into a smirk. “Death ought to be a mercy for you. Saved from the failure of having two princesses die on your watch.”

The bait worked, and Catra cursed herself for it as she lunged forward onto one of the runes. Lightning wracked her body, making every muscle seize up so tight she thought they might snap her bones. The barrage stopped a hair’s breadth before she passed out from the pain. Of course. That would be too easy. Catra forced herself to move through the aftershocks, darting from safe spot to safe spot, twisting her body to dodge what blasts she could and deflecting the ones she couldn’t. The heat from the metal began to bite into her skin, costing her that much more concentration—

Her foot came down on another rune. She braced herself for the shock in the instant she had before it tripped, but nothing tore through her. A cold shroud closed around her, snapping against her skin as she was forcibly teleported. It was nothing like the warm, almost floaty feeling of Glimmer’s magic. One instant before she closed her eyes, Catra was near the middle of the room, trying to gain ground, and when she opened them she was at the foot of the throne’s dais, watching Shadow Weaver pull the daggers from her hand and sink one end into her gut.

The pain didn’t hit her right away. Perhaps her body just refused to process it. But it struck her soon enough, the impossibly intense burn, like she had been set aflame. Glimmer screamed bloody murder nearby. Catra slumped forward as her breath dissolved to a gurgle, smearing spit on the front of Shadow Weaver’s robe. Her hand fell on the linked hilts and reflexively closed around them despite the dizzying arc of pain racing through her body.

“There, there,” Shadow Weaver said softly, patting Catra’s back in some mockery of maternal affection. Her other hand pressed briefly to Catra’s cheek, where an icy, numbing coldness began to spread. “I know it’s frustrating. You try so hard and always come up short. You weren’t enough for Adora. You weren’t enough to save Glimmer. But don’t worry. You won’t feel any pain soon. The next time you look at your little friends, you won’t feel anything but my orders in your head, telling you to sink the knife into their hearts.”

“ _Fuck you_ ,” Catra spat. With what strength she still had, she separated her daggers and plunged the second into Shadow Weaver’s neck.

What spilled out onto her hand wasn’t blood, or at least didn’t look like it. It was thin and dark and oily, seeping into her fur with alarming speed. Shadow Weaver stumbled back, clawing at the dagger as the runes in the room began to erupt. Lightning, ice, and fire all whipped into a maelstrom that buffeted Catra as she watched. She managed to stay standing by sheer will alone, refusing to drop before Shadow Weaver did.

The witch, her tormentor, choked on a wail as whatever ichor left inside her ran down her robes. She fixed her hands around the hilt to try to remove the dagger, but only writhed in pain at the effort. One corner of Catra’s mouth quirked into a grin at that. Shadow Weaver collapsed on the stairs leading to the throne, one pallid hand outstretched toward it before she fell still and silent. Catra looked at her unmoving body, or whatever it was under her robes, for several minutes. Was it minutes? Time had stopped being all that important. It was long enough for blood to start dripping down her leg.

“Catra…”

Right. Glimmer. Her Royal Sparkliness. Catra turned, expecting her to be free, but the barrier still stood, still tightening around her. Glimmer clapped her hands over her mouth when she saw how deep the dagger was in Catra’s gut.

Catra knelt down to try and retrieve the other blade, absent anything else that might have helped break the magic. The daggers were enchanted, Glimmer had told her that. It was all she could think of, and thinking was getting harder with each passing second. She grasped the hilt, only for it to crumble in her hands. All the magical rebound had ruined it. Catra stood and made the mistake of glancing up at the runestone, and her reflection in one of the facets. Whatever Shadow Weaver had done by touching her cheek had spread, reducing the right side of her face and body to silhouette. Half a shadow, staggering around on borrowed time. A wrecked reflection of what Shadow Weaver wanted to make her. No wonder Glimmer looked so horrified. She could have laughed if blood hadn’t been pooling in her mouth.

She turned back to Glimmer and approached the barrier before grasping at the dagger still lodged in her. “Catra, don’t,” Glimmer said in a panic. Her voice was still raw from screaming. It didn’t matter now. It felt strangely calming to admit that to herself. Nothing was going to save her. Might as well be useful. Her first attempt to remove it was clumsy and earned her nothing but enough pain that she nearly passed out. Glimmer was pounding on the barrier despite the way her skin seemed to smoke when she touched it.

The blade slid out on her second attempt, and a sheet of red rushed down without it holding everything in place. Catra groaned, fighting to focus on anything but the sudden rush of coldness blooming in her stomach, and tightened her grip as much as she could.

At first her dagger, her traitorous little dagger that had bitten into her as easily as anything else, did nothing to the barrier. Quite the opposite—the very tip glowed dimly with heat, and the coating of blood on it began to sizzle and steam. Glimmer had backed up as far as she could without pressing to the barrier, choking back sobs as her gaze flitted between the point of impact and Catra’s wound. She threw some heft behind her next strike and felt something shift inside her that she was sure wasn’t supposed to shift.

But little spiderwebs of cracks did start appearing in the barrier. It was always so damned cold in this room, Catra thought as she shivered. Too drafty. Blood dribbled over her lips and down her chin as she clenched her jaw and stabbed the dull, half-melted point of her dagger into the barrier. A piece fell away, then another, and then the whole thing began collapsing. Large shards fell over her hands and stung her. Catra dropped the dagger and stepped away, rubbing her arms to try and warm up. It didn’t help. Her thoughts were a swirling, indistinct morass punctuated only by sickening flashes of pain, and instinct took over. All she wanted to do now was find somewhere quiet and warm to curl up and go to sleep.

Catra made it only a few swaying steps before the world violently reoriented itself and smashed the floor against her. She tried to groan and only managed to make a little croaking sound.

“ _Catra_!”

The voice sounded very distant, like it was coming from the other end of a long hall. Everything sounded very distant apart from the ragged scrape of her own shallow breathing.

She was being rolled over. Glimmer had bruises and shiny patches of burned skin on her arms and hands. “You look like hell,” Catra said in barely more than a whisper, slurring her words, and coughed up blood instead of laughing. This was all very funny, suddenly. She knew she was losing it. Maybe that was a mercy.

“This—it’s going to be all right, you’re going to be all right…”

What a terrible liar. At least Adora would be pleased. She’d followed her orders, all the way to the bitter end. A bitter end didn’t sound so bad now. At least it would end. Catra went to clutch Glimmer’s arm, but stopped when she realized it was the hand that had become…a silhouette, a shadow, whatever it was. One final indignity from Shadow Weaver, denying her any scrap of comfort. Catra blinked, slowly.

“No no no, stay awake, listen to me, don’t close your eyes,” Glimmer said frantically. She put her hands over Catra’s stomach and pressed. The pain made tears prick at the corners of her eyes. “Please…just listen to my voice and stay awake. You’re going to be all right, understand? I promise.”

“It’s not your job to worry about me.”

She really _was_ dying. An addled body shutting itself down and her wits abandoning her was the only way to explain the tinge of warmth creeping back into her stomach and the sudden blaze of gold she saw behind Glimmer, shaped like an angel’s wings.


	9. Chapter 9

_A few moments prior…_

Glimmer screamed her throat raw as Shadow Weaver jammed one of Catra’s daggers into her stomach. The snarl of determination on her face crumbled, first into shock, and then nothing before she listed forward, into Shadow Weaver’s mocking embrace. All the pain of serving as the runestone’s conduit wasn’t half as bad as having to see this, but she couldn’t look away. An inky blackness began radiating from Catra’s wound and the spot on her cheek Shadow Weaver was touching as she whispered to her, covering the right half of her body in shadow.

And then, as fast as Glimmer blinked, it was over. Catra gurgled something incomprehensible, pulled her blades apart, and thrust the second dagger into Shadow Weaver’s neck. The agony of serving as the runestone’s medium died away. A spray of fell energy and perverted salitter covered everything as Shadow Weaver screamed and staggered, her rune traps bursting nearby, and tried vainly to remove the dagger before collapsing in on herself. Catra watched with an eerily impassive expression as whatever writhed beneath her robes finally fell still.

“Catra…”

Whatever spell Shadow Weaver had cast wasn’t dispersing, and neither was the cage she was stuck in. Everything on Catra’s right side, from her eye to her hip, had lost all texture and detail, as if she had only one foot in this world. She crouched to pull the dagger from Shadow Weaver’s neck, but it seemed to turn viscous in her hand and melt away.

Catra seemed in a trance as she came up to the barrier, eyes glazed over, one hand feeling around on her stomach for the dagger still stuck in her. Her intention only hit Glimmer an instant before she fixed her hands around the hilt. “Catra, don’t,” she said frantically. Her throat scratched. Catra paid no mind to the way she struck her fist on the barrier, skin sizzling from the contact, before pulling the blade out of her with a sickening groan. Blood poured down her leg as she started attacking the barrier.

Glimmer was choking back sobs as Catra stabbed and stabbed at the barrier, as the unshrouded half of her body paled beneath her fur with blood loss. She swayed and shuddered until the barrier finally began collapsing. Her remaining dagger was a smoking, twisted mess by then, and the palms of her hands were branded from the heat when she dropped it and stumbled back. Catra shivered and started walking away. To where, Glimmer didn’t know. Did she think she was in any fit state to do anything?

Her retreat ended after only a few steps, when she collapsed in the middle of a scorch mark left by an exploded rune.

“Catra!”

Glimmer’s knees scraped on the floor as she dropped beside Catra and turned her over, but she didn’t care. Catra’s eyes, or at least the one that still looked normal, focused briefly on her. “You look like hell,” she said. The bloody fur around her mouth twisted in a smirk.

“This—it’s going to be all right, you’re going to be all right,” Glimmer said. Catra reached for her arm, but the hand fell away, sapped of its strength, and her eyes began to flutter shut. “No no no, stay awake. Listen to me, don’t close your eyes.”

She put her hands over the gash in Catra’s stomach and held them there to keep any more blood from seeping out, even while Catra began to cry from the pain. Glimmer’s resolve steeled. “Please…just listen to my voice and stay awake,” she said softly, and started channeling all the energy she could into healing her. “You’re going to be all right, understand? I promise.”

“It’s not your job to worry about me.”

Glimmer’s magic erupted in a blaze around her, violet flecked with gold, as Catra’s fur grew hot beneath her hands. It was too much energy to safely put into even a healthy body, to say nothing of Catra’s sorry state, but her options were to either perhaps kill Catra with too much power, or let her die for certain. She took one hand from the stab wound and tried to siphon off the lingering shadow, drawing it far enough away that she could safely dispel it. Two intensive spells at once should have been beyond her, but it seemed that the runestone’s magic was still thick enough in her to manage.

Finally, the corruption that clung to Catra’s fur like ink had been pulled away and discarded, though not without leaving its mark. Her fur was noticeably darker where it had stuck, but Glimmer could worry about that later. Her ephemeral wings that so rarely manifested now enfolded them both, drawing a golden cocoon around her and Catra as she poured more and more energy into healing everything the dagger had done. Slowly, painfully slowly, the damage began to knit itself back together. Glimmer’s hands burned with the effort, but she had long since stopped feeling the pain except in a distant, abstract sense.

Catra’s ragged breathing strengthened by small degrees as she squirmed from the heat of the healing. “I know, I know, try to bear it,” Glimmer said. The amount of magic flowing between them briefly superimposed Catra’s sensorium on her own, and for a moment Glimmer was looking at herself as Catra saw her right then, panicked, disheveled, flecked with blood. A thread of wonder and beauty ran through her disjointed thoughts before Glimmer’s own senses reasserted themselves.

When her healing would do no more but pointlessly radiate heat, she drew her hand away and leaned down, pressing her ear to Catra’s chest to see if it had worked. Her stomach roiled with worry and her mind whirled with all manner of awful thoughts. Was it not enough? Too much? _Oh, please, let her be all right_ , Glimmer said to herself. She pled over and over, entreating any power that would listen, until she heard the faint _thu-thump_ of Catra’s heartbeat.

All the tension holding her body tight relaxed, and Glimmer felt like she could finally breathe again. Catra had passed out, but she was alive. That had to be enough for now. Glimmer turned Catra on her side so she wouldn’t smother on any lingering blood and kissed her cheek in relief.

The wings enclosing them furled out as she stood, lighting up the throne room and exposing the remnants of the shadow that had clung to Catra. It wisped and rolled over itself, moving in tiny increments toward the throne. Toward whatever was left of Shadow Weaver. Glimmer sighed and flexed her sore hands. Whatever else Shadow Weaver was, _persistent_ had to be on the list. She blasted the shadow, making her bolts as bright as she could, until the last shreds dissolved into ether. Glimmer tucked her hands under her arms. Channeling so much magic in such a short time, on top of touching the barrier several times, had left her skin raw and scalded by spellburn, with searing pain that cut down to the bone.

She cautiously approached the lumpy robes and the mask lying atop them. The still-flailing lash of corrupted Mystacori energy, more a wound in the magical substrate than a real being, reached out and stung her. Glimmer tried to summon another bolt, but her well of magic had run dry for the time being. Without returning to the Moonstone or resting for a week, she might as well not have been a mage at all.

Except…there was another source of magic here.

Glimmer put one knee on the throne to reach up and touch the primal runestone. Tingles ran up her fingers all the way to her shoulder, making her whole arm vibrate. It didn’t _hurt_ , exactly, but neither was it a pleasant sensation to open herself like a sluice and let unfamiliar magic crackle through her. She drew off only what she thought she might need to get by, then wrapped her boot in golden light. It slammed down on Shadow Weaver’s mask, over and over, until the ceramic was nothing more than dust and the robes beneath were only curled, smoking scraps of fabric. Glimmer scooped up the remains and heated them in her hands until there was nothing left but vapor and her small fragment of the Black Garnet. As unstable as it was, Glimmer only had to squeeze on it for a moment before it dissolved with a hiss.

“Stay dead this time,” she muttered, and hurried back to Catra, picking her up despite groans of protest. Even without armor, she was heavier than she looked. “Deal with it, Captain. Can’t leave you in a puddle of your own blood. I’m sure you didn’t come alone, Adora has to be here somewhere…”

It didn’t take long to find her, once Glimmer started following the sounds of battle through the snaking corridors. A transformed Adora was wading through a pile of solid shadows shaped like the guardians from the temple, with one still skewered on her sword. Fresh cuts all over her body twisted and leaked blood as she swung the sword, forcing its latest victim off the blade and crashing into a wall nearby. She was the only thing left moving that Glimmer could see, wobbling a little on unsteady legs.

“Adora.” Glimmer took a step closer and kicked at the nearest creature. The blackness covering it sloughed off and dissolved, revealing one of the skittering little spider machines from the temple. “Adora, it’s over.”

She turned toward the sound of Glimmer’s voice, still scanning for threats, until her expression softened at seeing them. Adora started to move toward them, only for her transformation to drop an instant before she fainted, utterly spent. Glimmer sighed. “You too, huh? Well, get some rest, you deserve it.”

Her wounds weren’t as serious as Catra’s, mostly surface cuts here and there. Glimmer eased Catra down against an undestroyed section of wall and then carried Adora to the same spot, where they could slump against one another while Glimmer tended to Adora’s more serious cuts. That done, Glimmer sat back and thought about where would be safe to teleport them to. Bright Moon was too far, Mystacor was even farther, and Grayskull was as good as unknown country to her. She would have to think about it more later. For now, all she wanted to do was close her eyes for a few minutes. Just a…few minutes…

⁂

“You really are a fool, do you know that? Your father would—your _mother_!—both of them would lose their minds if they knew the half of what happened here. It’s a wonder that this was the worst of it.”

Glimmer leaned back in her chair and took her aunt’s censure. It was the fourth such reproach that day, though it was the first time since arriving that she’d invoked the queen. “Yes, Aunt Castaspella, we were extremely fortunate, Aunt Castaspella,” she repeated in a dull voice.

“Don’t make light of this, young lady, you’re lucky you’re alive at all.”

“Here. Fresh from the kitchens.”

A cup of weak chilled wine appeared from over her shoulder. “Oh, thank you.”

Catra waited until she’d taken it before sitting in her own chair beside Glimmer’s, holding another cup as best she could in her bandaged hands. Glimmer looked sidelong at her as she held the cup and let the cold soothe the remaining spellburn on her palms. As she’d thought, the fur on the right side of Catra’s body had been left permanently darkened by her ordeal, but a doublet and gloves would cover most of it well enough. The discoloration on her face wouldn’t be possible to conceal without a mask, but her eye had returned to its normal color, at least. She grimaced from the effort of sitting down and touched gingerly at the bandages beneath her undershirt covering her stab wound. Glimmer had expected her to take the bed rest that Castaspella had ordered, but she had been up and about for days now, mostly sitting here in the infirmary when exhaustion didn’t force her to sleep.

“Do you know what’s wrong with her yet?” Catra asked. Castaspella looked down at Adora, resting peacefully in the infirmary bed, and touched the bright blue rune spinning over her face. It rippled from the disturbance, making Adora frown beneath it. Catra leaned forward in her seat. “Well, don’t hurt her!”

“I’m working off of theory, there are bound to be some bumps. And I don’t exactly have the tools here that would help me make a faster diagnosis.” The rune stilled, and Adora relaxed again. Castaspella rolled a small bead of light between her fingers. “I can say something with more confidence when my equipment gets here, but for now, the educated guess is that Shadow Weaver trying to siphon off her runestone disrupted her connection to it. And as she’s the only one we know of that draws on it, she’s feeling the damage more acutely than if the magic were spread over more people. I’m sure the extended transformations didn’t help, either…”

Catra’s lips pressed into a thin line, and Glimmer was struck with the distinct impression that she was about to say something impolitic. She cleared her throat and turned the cup in her hands. “Maybe you have some thoughts on her prognosis?” Glimmer asked. Catra’s fur stopped smoothing and returned to its usual fuzziness. “I’m sure it would help put everyone at ease.”

Catra turned to her, still biting her tongue, then let her shoulders stoop and nodded.

“The two of you burned off a great deal of magic last week. But it’s cyclical. The energy released by spells eventually reconstitutes in the source. And since the princess is so deeply tied to her runestone, she should recover along with it. Based on a quick inspection of it…a few more days, perhaps, and then we can see if she responds to being woken up. It’s not some eternal slumber, if that’s what you’re worried about. That only happens in stories.”

“I am _not_ worried,” Catra mumbled, worriedly.

“No, of course not. I’m going to see how the others are getting on. Do mind that it’s getting late and you’re both in recovery, too. I don’t want to have to explain to Bow why you haven’t been getting enough bed rest when he gets here, Glimmer.”

That wouldn’t be a pleasant conversation for any of them, not after she’d already slipped out of Bright Moon without him and nearly gotten herself killed. The Mystacori were as good with threats as they were with magic. Castaspella slipped out of the room and closed the door behind her, at which point Glimmer took a sip of her wine and moved to the bed behind her, where she could still keep an eye on Adora. “There. Bed rest. You’re my witness.”

“I’m sure your aunt will see it that way,” Catra said. Glimmer patted the empty space beside her, and Catra’s joined her after a moment’s hesitation. Her tail brushed at Glimmer’s calf as she unwrapped her hands and held the chilled cup. A sigh slipped out of her. The silence stretched out between them as they watched Adora rest. Glimmer wondered if she was dreaming, or if everything between collapsing and waking up would pass in the blink of an eye for her. Catra set down her wine, undrunk, and pulled her legs up to her chest. Her tail withdrew from Glimmer’s leg and curled around her ankles. “About the other day. In the throne room. That—that name Shadow Weaver called me.”

She was trembling, Glimmer saw. “You don’t have to explain if you don’t want to.”

“Is there anything to explain? You’re smart enough to put it together.”

Glimmer worked her lip between her teeth, then nodded. Knowing as little as she did about magicats, it hadn’t been her first guess, but having things spelled out like this did make it seem a bit obvious in retrospect. “So, that’s…that’s what she’d do,” Catra said, her voice thick. The glister of a tear stood out against her newly-black fur. “Hold it over me, threaten to undo what she did. When she thought I wasn’t working as fast as she wanted or she…just wanted to ruin my day. Maybe she enjoyed having that power, I don’t know—”

Catra tried to hide her face, shuddering and sniffling, until Glimmer reached over and pulled her closer. She shuffled closer without resistance, only barely holding herself together until she tucked her cheek against Glimmer’s shoulder. Wet points of warmth stained through her robe as Catra started to cry in earnest, clutching at Glimmer’s arms as she slumped into her. It felt almost too intimate, too much for whatever their relationship actually was, but rather than shy away Glimmer only wanted to comfort her however she could. She rubbed a small circle between Catra’s shoulder blades. “You’re safe now, she’s not going to do anything to you ever again. I promise,” Glimmer said, gently nuzzling into Catra’s hair. The grip on her arms relaxed the smallest bit. “It’s going to be all right. And it worked out the last time I said that, so trust me?”

She huffed out a sound that might have been a laugh, and Glimmer chanced to pull her into a hug. That threatened to set her off again, but Catra only sucked in a deep, shaky breath and let it blow out again before returning her embrace. When she did move back, Catra took one of Glimmer’s hands and turned it palm-up. Although most of the acute pain was gone, the skin there was still bright and soft. The pad of Catra’s thumb touched near the middle. “You really messed yourself up for me.”

“You’re one to talk,” Glimmer said, gently taking Catra’s wrist and turning her unbandaged hand over in turn. Rather than a general discoloration, she had a line running the length of her palm where the dagger hilt had imprinted on her before melting from the magical rebound.

“That’s different. It’s my job.”

Glimmer touched at the parts of her fingers that had the same burn marks. “Well, I don’t have a job. I have a title, but I’m never going to rule Bright Moon. My mother is immortal and there are stronger mages than me anyway. I’m not even trusted to be the designated regent. So the circumstances weren’t ideal, but…it felt like something I needed to do. I had the means, so I had to save you, spellburn or no.”

“Saved by a princess, how embarrassing,” Catra said, wiping away the last of her tears with her free hand.

“ _Someone_ has to keep you safe. I’m glad I was able to.”

Catra offered her a weak smile as her fingers closed around Glimmer’s. The slight air of levity grew heavy again as they fell silent and Glimmer noticed the way Catra’s gaze kept flitting to her lips, which she only noticed in the brief moments when _she_ stopped looking at Catra’s lips. She felt herself leaning forward by the smallest degrees until they both turned away and let their hands slip apart. Glimmer tried to shake her head clear and was left with the persistent mental image of Catra edging forward the same way she had.

They contented themselves with watching over Adora for a while longer, keeping a silent vigil, until they were distracted by noises from outside. It sounded very much to Glimmer like her aunt asking if they’d left yet, followed by a colorful string of Mystacori swears and her throwing the door open. “Both of you! Bed rest!”

“We _are_ on a bed,” Glimmer said with a brush of her hand over the sheets. Her technicality met with a less than amused reaction. Castaspella flicked her fingers and made the bed slowly rotate until they slid off and onto their feet. As they started to shuffle out Glimmer said, “You were right, it didn’t work.”

“There’s a full complement of guards outside, the princess is perfectly safe. Off with you.”

“I don’t answer to you,” Catra muttered.

“You do as long as you’re my patient. Now find a bed before I find one to tie you to so your body can actually heal.”

Catra’s fur bristled, and she hurried out behind Glimmer, past the retinue of guards standing watch outside the infirmary. “You’re sure that’s your father’s sister?” she asked. “Because he’s nice. She’s…kind of a taskmaster.”

“She means well. Most of the time.”

Rather than teleport back to her quarters in the guest wing, Glimmer walked alongside Catra, turning down this and that hall until they were in what she recognized as the royal apartments. If Catra minded the company, she gave no sign. “Do you have your own room near Adora’s?”

“Hmm?”

Catra went into Adora’s apartment, which looked largely as it had the day they’d left Grayskull. Almost all of the furniture was in pieces, sections of the walls had been punched out, and a window was missing most of its glass. The only appreciable difference was the narrow path someone had made by sweeping away debris from the door to the bed, which was lying atop the ruins of its frame. “Oh, Catra. No. Please don’t tell me you’ve been sleeping in here.”

“It’s my room, too,” she said defiantly, nudging a piece of stone out of the path she’d made. “I put in for a repair the other day, but there are lots of repairs to make. And it’s not as bad as it looks.”

It was arguably _worse_ than it looked, depending on how sound the walls were with pieces missing. She crossed her arms. “Do you think Adora would want you sleeping in here?”

“There’s a bed in here, that’s more than we had on the road…no, she wouldn’t,” Catra admitted. Her shoulders hunched at being caught out. “It’s what I’m used to. And there aren’t any free rooms in the guest wing, now that your aunt and her soldiers are here.”

“I have space. Come on, get your nightclothes and whatever else you need, you’ll stay with me tonight. Or until this place doesn’t look like a battlefield…”

Catra turned to her, seemingly on the verge of refusing while rubbing at her arm. “You don’t have to do this,” Catra said, even as she started gathering up some sundries she had laid out on a relatively intact section of table on the floor.

“Even so. I don’t want you in here if the ceiling comes down.”

She rolled some clothes into a bundle under her arm and slipped out of the room. Glimmer offered her hand. Catra’s palm was soft against hers as they vanished and reappeared in the guest wing, within Glimmer’s apartments. They separated, slowly, and started going about their evening routines. Glimmer took a nightshirt she’d left behind in her haste to leave last time and retreated into the washroom, soaking her hands in cold water for a moment before splashing the rest on her face. Of course she couldn’t have let Catra stay in that deathtrap, but now she was very aware that they were alone. The last time they’d gone off by themselves the result had been…rather more heated than expected. And now they weren’t even at each other’s throats. That thought, for better or worse, set Glimmer to thinking about the overall shapeliness of Catra’s throat until she splashed more cold water on her face. “That’s enough,” she said to herself. Quite enough. She could offer someone a place to sleep without going to pieces.

Catra was curled up in her nightshirt at the foot of the bed when Glimmer emerged, tail flicking idly as she looked down at the floor. Oh, this girl wasn’t going to take an inch, was she? “Do you usually sleep like that?” Glimmer asked. “It’s a big bed.”

“I didn’t, ah, no,” Catra said, stumbling over what she wanted to say. She sat up and ran her hand over the sheets. Her nightshirt was rather thin, red silk falling over her shoulders and tucking in against her waist. Glimmer pressed her lips together. “Normally I sleep the same as everyone else, but that’s when I’m alone or Adora’s next to me. It seemed presumptuous.”

“You don’t have to sleep down there like a, like…”

“Like a cat?”

Her wry smile faded when Glimmer took her hand and guided her up the bed until she could fold back the sheets. Catra hesitated, watching Glimmer climb in on the other side, before Glimmer slid over two of her pillows. “Come on. It’s bed rest, not foot-of-the-bed rest. Don’t make me tell my aunt.”

“No need to make such dire threats.”

Catra eased down into the bed and turned on her side toward Glimmer, maintaining enough distance between them to be respectful before Glimmer shuffled closer. When Catra didn’t move away, she shrank the distance a bit more, and more, until it was a simple matter to slip her arms around Catra, who tensed. “Would you rather not—?”

“No, no, it’s fine. I didn’t expect it, that’s all.”

Once she relaxed, Catra went slack in Glimmer’s arms, nestling into the crook of her shoulder. Her breathing leveled off as she fell asleep, one hand draped over Glimmer’s waist, and a faint noise thrummed through her chest. Glimmer desperately wanted to ask Catra if she was purring, but it didn’t seem worth waking her up. She had the right idea, Glimmer thought as she snuffed the candles and closed her eyes. Healing was exhausting work.

⁂

Glimmer was working her cheek into her pillow when she awoke, blinking starbursts from her eyes as her magic came under conscious control. The high, wide window behind her that cut a compromise between letting in light and controlling drafts only showed her so much, but once she had her wits, her attention went less to what she saw and rather more to what she felt. Catra was still laying against her, as if they hadn’t moved since falling asleep. Perhaps they hadn’t. Soft, messy hair brushed against her chin and neck, a hand with its claws half-extended was set on the small of her back, and a distinct firmness pressed pleasantly at the inside of her bare thigh where her nightshirt had ridden up.

_Ah._

It took few another few moments to fully wake up, but once she did and was able to appreciate the delicateness of her situation, Glimmer froze while figuring out what to do. She couldn’t honestly say she was opposed to her present circumstances, but neither did she want to embarrass Catra. It had taken no small diplomacy to get her here in the first place, and repeating the awkwardness of their sparring session would almost surely have Catra retreating to Adora’s wrecked quarters. Glimmer couldn’t countenance that. But she could fix this. All she had to do was ease back enough to make some space between them. They didn’t even have to separate, she could just roll onto her back.

Carefully, Glimmer took her arm from around Catra’s side. The one beneath her neck would have to come last, after Glimmer divined some way to untangle their legs. But one thing at a time, she thought. Glimmer reached around her back for Catra’s wrist and lifted it, taking care to move it in such a way that the claw tips wouldn’t tear her nightshirt. That left the issue of where to put it, and she managed to rest it well enough on Catra’s hip. Not the most natural position, but she could fix it in a moment. Glimmer tried to move back enough to look under the sheets and see how their legs were knotted together, but the motion only made Catra move along with her, sliding forward to stay close. Her hips pushed upward, so near to hitting home that Glimmer had to stifle a moan. “Will you cooperate?” Glimmer said under her breath, and realized her mistake when Catra’s ears twitched and she arched back. Mismatched eyes looked blearily at her before widening with dawning realization.

Glimmer still hadn’t figured out how Catra managed to blush _through_ her fur, but her cheeks reddened all the same. She started to say something several times, but the words seemed to catch in her throat. Glimmer thought of what she might be able to say to smooth this over and similarly came up wanting. All they could do was look at each other. Even when reason said they could disentangle themselves now, neither seemed willing to separate. The only motion Glimmer could see was the way Catra’s gaze moved between her eyes and her lips.

* * *

The hand she’d so carefully moved returned to the small of her back, light enough to feel testing. It was only when Glimmer rolled her hips forward and made them both shiver that she knew she wanted this. That they both did. Glimmer inched closer and watched Catra do the same, heart pounding against the front of her chest, until impatience won out and she closed the distance.

Catra returned her kiss at once, pushing her body up to Glimmer’s once again as her lips parted, tongue flitting out. The sound of Catra’s moans shook off the morning drear at once. Her hand ran up Glimmer’s back, beneath her nightshirt and between her shoulder blades.

Glimmer was dizzy by the time they broke for air. She stroked Catra’s cheek as she caught her breath, then split her attention for only as long as it took to throw off the duvet, unknot their legs, and push Catra onto her back to straddle her. Catra looked almost bemused, unsure of what to do, until her expression turned to a gasp when Glimmer canted her hips. She tightened her legs around Catra’s, pressing as close as they could be with fabric in between them, until Catra thought to remedy that and found the hem of Glimmer’s nightshirt. Her voice was raw, choked with need. “Can I take this off?”

“Yes…”

Catra sat up, shivering when her erection shifted against Glimmer’s sex, as she drew her nightshirt up and off, tossing it aside. The morning cold made Glimmer cleave to Catra’s warmth, pressing into another kiss as clawed hands roamed her back, taking in all the dips and curves she could find before moving down to Glimmer’s thighs. She felt goosebumps draw up in the wake of each sharp point until they retracted so Catra could squeeze tight at her legs. Flickering sparks in her belly turned to a storm, leaving little jolts of pleasure in its wake.

They broke away long enough for Glimmer to do away with Catra’s clothes in turn before Catra dove back into her, wrapping one arm around Glimmer’s waist to guide her back onto the bed. Suddenly Catra was looming over her, supported on one elbow while Glimmer felt at a thick tuft of fur in the middle of her chest. Catra took Glimmer’s hand and kissed the sensitive skin of her palm, and then her wrist, before dipping down and continuing the trail all the way up to her collarbone. Her legs pressed to the backs of Glimmer’s thighs all the while, taut and lithe, but also remarkably still. Even sliding her hand down Catra’s stomach, carefully avoiding the still-sensitive stab wound there, and wrapping around the base of her shaft only won Glimmer a low moan. The thought of all that strength hidden away somewhere made Glimmer eager to see if she could tease it out. “Hmm.”

“What is it?” Catra asked in between lavishing kisses on her throat and the crook of her shoulder, her voice still pulled tight.

Glimmer gave her a few short strokes and felt Catra’s legs tense up against her. Still, she didn’t try to chase the motion. “Somehow I thought you would be more…aggressive,” Glimmer said. Catra’s fur smoothed down to a sleek coat when she lifted herself back up, hair falling around her face as she looked down at Glimmer with an unreadable expression. No, not unreadable, she realized. Intense. Single-minded. Hungry.

“Did you,” she said, oh so softly. One claw reappeared and traced a line up Glimmer’s side, sliding along the swell of her breast. “And how often have you been thinking about what I might be like?”

Glimmer squirmed from both the question and the feeling of her claw, moving in a slow, inward spiral before closing on her nipple. “Once or twice, after we sparred. Maybe more than that.” Catra smirked.

“ _Maybe_. Well. That’s the idea most people have of magicats, isn’t it? Wanton, insatiable, all full of desire,” Catra said. Glimmer was on the verge of apologizing when Catra slipped down and nipped at her ear. “And you have _no_ idea how happy I’d be to live down to those expectations…if that’s what you want.”

A surge of heat ran through her body. The claw on her retracted and was replaced with Catra’s hand on her breast. “Hmm?”

“You don’t have to treat me like a piece of spun glass,” she finally said, feeling her breathing quicken as she did.

“Good.”

There was another kiss on the side of her throat, before Catra’s fangs pricking at the sensitive skin made her gasp. Catra sat up with a satisfied grin. Glimmer trembled at the feeling of her claws returning, pressing harder than before as they dragged down to her hip, leaving flashes of pain in their wake. “I should’ve guessed,” Catra said as she drew her hand swiftly to Glimmer’s sex, mercifully keeping her claws clear as her fingers ran through the arousal there. The stimulation made Glimmer arch her back and stroke Catra faster. Their hands bumped together, and Catra brushed her off for the time being. “You can’t be prim and proper all of the time, can you?”

Before she could answer, Catra brought her hand up to Glimmer’s mouth, brushing at her lips and smearing arousal over them until Glimmer let her in. She licked Catra’s fingers clean, glassy-eyed as her tongue worked, until Catra was satisfied. Her hands raked downward again, drawing up alternate hot and cold feelings as they scraped while Catra settled in between Glimmer’s legs. The claws finally dug into her thighs and settled there for the moment, holding her in place as Catra circled Glimmer’s clit with her tongue. When she did hit home, Catra spared no attention, closing her eyes and relaxing her grip while Glimmer whimpered at the rush of pleasure. Her hands ran into Catra’s hair when her tempo slowed enough for Glimmer to think. “Tell me when you’re close,” Catra whispered, her lips humming against Glimmer. She nodded. Words seemed like an insurmountable challenge with her thoughts in a whirl.

Gradually Catra’s hands started to wander again, scratching thin red lines into Glimmer’s skin and even drawing blood in some softer places as her tongue worked its steady cadence. Her wings flared to life, throwing bright violet light around the room while she ground her hips into Catra’s face. The heat licking through her was reaching a fever pitch, running her ragged from trying to chase her pleasure. “I,” she began, and the rest crumbled in her throat. She tapped at the base of Catra’s ears instead. Catra looked up at her and, seeing her nod frantically, reared up and flipped Glimmer onto her stomach. She leaned forward, over Glimmer, and nudged tauntingly at her sex.

“Well, princess?”

She was so close, so agonizingly _close_ and it wasn’t enough. Glimmer tried to push back on her, but a clawed hand pressed to her thigh and kept her in place. “Please,” she choked out.

“So polite,” Catra said, and pressed into her. She sank in slowly, her breath racing out in a hiss between Glimmer’s shoulder blades. Glimmer clutched the bedsheets, trying to wrap her head around the sensation, the heat, the fullness, before Catra’s hips bumped at hers and there were as close as could be. Claws dug into her side as Catra rocked back and then forward again, making them both tense.

Their pause hadn’t cooled Glimmer’s arousal overmuch, and she was quickly back to where she was before. Judging by the frenetic pace Catra was setting, she wasn’t far behind. Controlled as she tried to be, her careful composure had already been shattered, making each needful snap of her hips come quicker and quicker than the last. Each little sliver of bliss Catra offered tipped her further and further, until she felt like she would snap in two from the pressure closing in on her. A few more energetic thrusts left her unable to stave it off, and a wave of tremors wracked their way through her body as it all blew out. She slumped onto the bed, giving herself over to the pleasure, moaning into the sheets without a care for how she sounded. “Oh, you— _Glimmer_ —!”

Had she ever heard her name from Catra’s mouth? It sounded so sweet on her tongue, a piece of inspired verse. Catra’s teeth fixed into the crook of her shoulder, riding the edge between pain and pleasure, before Glimmer whined from a sudden, gnawing emptiness. A furious growl worked out of Catra and hummed against Glimmer’s skin as she felt a rush of warmth against the inside of her thigh. The claws on her waist dug so deep they almost drew blood, then relaxed as Catra slumped atop her, panting as her teeth withdrew.

They laid there for a long time, robbed of words. Or perhaps not needful of them. Glimmer’s wings folded over Catra as they listened to each other’s breathing. The steady, vital thrum of Catra’s heart against Glimmer’s back soothed her until her trembling from being bitten and scratched faded. All the energy that had seized her began to cool with her ardor as she came down from the high. “I feel like I need to go back to sleep,” Glimmer said.

“Mmhmm. Bed rest, right?”

Her wings faded to allow Catra to slide off Glimmer and then tug her closer, in a pleasant reversal of the night before. Now Glimmer was held against Catra’s chest, wrapped securely in her arms. She pressed a kiss to the hollow of Catra’s throat.

“Right.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading.


End file.
